LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



Chap..!:-.!.- Copyright No. 



..•?M 



i^O o 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



AET A^^D LIFE 



ARUSKIN ANTHOLOGY 



COMPILED BY 

WM. SLOANE KENNEDY 



"Ih((ve always fhoiir/hf that more true force of persuasion mirjht he obtained by 

rightly choosing and arranging what others have said, than by 

painfully saying it again in one's own ivay." 

— RusKiN, Furs Clavigera, Vol. I., p. 381. 



NEW YORK: 

JOHN B. ALDEN, PUBLISHER. 



1 



TVVo Copies iiti«^£ivEE), 

L/trary yf Conjfret% 
Office f th« 

MAV •» 6 1900 

Kojfleter of Copyright* 
SECOND COPY. -. 

Copyrighted, 1886 and 1900 *'^. 

BY 

John B. Alden. 



Of old sang Chaucer of the Floicer and Leaf : 
The viirthful singer of a golden time ; 
I ' And stveet birds' song throughout his daisied rliume 

Rang fearless ; for our cities held no grief 
3 Dumb in their blackened hearts beneath the grime 

) Of factory and furnace, and the sheaf 

v^ Was borne in gladvA'ss ar the harvest-time. 

J So now the Seer u'ould Quicken our belief : 

^ " Life the green leaf,'''' saith he, "and Art the flower, 

k:^ Blow winds of heaven about the hearts of men, 

Come love, and hope, and helpfulness, as ivhen 
On fainting vineyard falls the freshening shoicer : 

Fear not that life may blossom yet again, 
A nobler beauty from a purer power ! '^ 

H. Bellyse Baildon, 

in John Buskin, Economist. 



CONTENTS. 



PAOE 

Introduction, 11 



PART I.- ART. 

Section I. 

CardiDal Tenets, 21 

Art and Man in the Middle AKes, 46 

Imitation and Finisli, 50 

Great Art and Great Men 60 

The Imagination in Art, 67 

Section II.— The Graphic Arts. 

Chapter I.— Painting, TO 

Religious Painting, 86 

Venice and tlie Venetian Painters, 90 

The Dntch Masters 105 

The Classical School, 106 

Landscape, ^ . . 109 

Turner Ill 

Turner and the Spliigen Drawing 117 

Color 123 

Pre-Raphaelitism, 130 

Chapter II.— Engraving 133 

Illumination, 135 

Wood Cuts, 136 

Section III.— Architecture, 143 

Home Architecture, J45 

City and Suburban Arcliitecture, 147 

Gothic Architecture, 154 

Section IV.— Sculpture, 166 

Sculpture in Relation to the Workingman, .... 169 

Tlie Tombs of the Doges in Venice, 171 



6 CONTENTS. 

PART II.-SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 

PAGE 

Chapter I. 

Economic Caiious , , .181 

Wealth 189 

Livbor, li»l 

Riches, . 194 

Poverty, 214 

On Co-operation, 225 

Trade, 220 

Land 238 

Machinerj-, 243 

War, 244 

Modern Warfare, 248 

A Dream-Parable of War and Wf altli, 256 

Government, 25S 

Liberty 202 

Fiesh Air and Light, .264 

Chapter IL 

Education, 269 

The Education of Children 287 

Teacliinpf Science to Children, 29'> 

Education in Art, 298 

Chapter III. 

Museums, 309 

Chapter IV. 

St, George's Guild, • . .314 

In llusldn's Utopia, 319 



PART in.— THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

Chapter I. 

Morals ^ ... 329 

Domestic Servants, 349 

Liquor Question, 352 

Gentlemauliness and Vulgarit}% 354 

Chapter II. 

Religion 357 

The Bible, 307 

Chapter III. 

Women 380 

Women and Religion, 380 

Girls 390 

CH.'kPTEK IV. 

'•TlieMob." 403 

Address by a Mangled Convict to a Benevolent Gentleman, 419 



CONTENTS. 7 

PART IV.— SCIENCE. 

PAGE 

Chapter I. 

Serpenl^, 425 

Birds, ' 427 

Chaptkr II. 

Botany 4132 

Chapter III. 

Mineials 440 

Chapter IV. 

Clouds, . . , 446 

Chapter V, 

Bits of Thought 453 

PART V. -NATURE AND LITERATURE. 

Chapter I. 

Nature, 407 

The Sea 4SJ 

TheMonntaiiis, 484 

Chapter II. 

Literature 502 

Books 503 

Myths 514 

Fiction 518 

Scott and his Novels 521 

Poems by Ruskin, 530 

Chapter III. 

Autobiographical, 531 

Reminiscences of my Cliildhood 542 

Leaves from Ruskins Piivate Accounts, 553 

Chapter IV. 

Odds and Ends, 561 



APPENDIX. 
Ruskins Writings in Classified Groups, 



PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION. 



When John Ruskin died the other day on the 
shores of Coniston water the last of the group of 
idealistic giants of the Victorian era passed away. 
One must pity the man or woman who has lived as the 
contemporary of this man and not had his or her life 
enriched by his gospel of beauty and justice. He has 
shown us the world's delicate tent of blue shutting- 
down around a splendor of living beauty that makes a 
mere child's toy of even such a marvellous shrine as 
that of St. Mark's. Single-handed Ruskin slew the 
vile and heartless Ricardo and Adam Smith school of 
political economy, proving it unscientific because treat- 
ing man as a machine, and ignoring the chief element 
in the case, — the emotional and moral nature. Even 
his enemies admit that he has done this. It was a 
great service. Ruskin has rescued the study of art 
in England from dilettanteism. His judgments on 
special works of the old and the modern painters (you 
can see for yourself when you examine the originals) 
are often absurdly awry, exaggerated, swayed by his 
own eccentric personal bias ; but, as has been said of 
Carlyle, his very foibles are interesting. 

His harsh words about America were, like Carlyle's, 
largely the result of dense ignorance of the best men 
and things here. Charles Eliot Norton he loved, but 
he seemed to think Norton the only man America had 
produced 1 I suppose if I had not availed myself of 
Professor Norton's kind offices, when writing to get 
permission from Ruskin to make this volume of selec- 
tions from his works, I should have fared ill. For, 
although I wrote ofEering him the copyright proceeds 
of the work (wliich he kindly refused in my favor), 

9 



10 PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION. 

the MS. had ah'eady been phiced in the printer's 
hands.* 

Last summer, a year ago, I spent a few hours at 
Coniston Lake, and took a walk to Brantwood, which 
is the last house out from Coniston, all beyond it, 
southward, being an unbroken solitude until the end 
of the lake is reached, four miles away. A great 
spongy fell slopes up and away from the estate, which 
borders the lake. (I got lost up among the mists of 
one of these gloomy and rainy uplands, or mountain 
fells, not far from Coniston, yet was smitten witli its 
grandeur and semi-conscious slumbering life, as of 
Browning's hills lying with chin on hand.) The road 
of approach to Brantwood is a public one and runs 
along the lakeside, the few residences lying between it 
and the lake. Running streams of pure water descend 
from the fell, and out of the hillwood, across the road. 
The terminus of the only railroad that has tried to 
penetrate the Lake Region is on the opposite side of 
the water from Brantwood ; yet the infrequent shrieks 
of the locomotive can be plainly heard there. The 
master had, willi-nilli, to endure the hated things. On 
my return, I stopped and chatted with a halo and canny 
old " wesher-woman," as she called herself, wlio lived on 
this same Ruskinward road, not very far from Brant- 
wood, and whose lowly cottage door was glorified by 
a canopy of reddest roses (England seemed to me even 
more the land of roses than Italy ; every other cot- 
tage has a gloire, or some red or white rose clamber- 
ing to its thatched dormers and about its roof). She 
said a gentleman and his wife from foreign parts had 
visited Brantwood that summer. " From America ? " 
" Yes. I think from America, or some such road," — 
half apologetically, as if anybody who did not live in 
Coniston were necessarily a little under suspicion for 
foolish wandering from the established and ordained 
center of the world. 

W. S. K. 

Belmont, Mass., April 4, 1900. 

* Professor Norton wrote me (April 23, '86): "Mrs. 
Severn writes (7 April) of Mr. Ruskin and your ' Selec- 
tions ' : 'As regards the extracts, be says he's pleased Mr. 
Kennedy has enjoyed his work, and that he's at liberty to 
publisb tbem,'" 



INTRODUCTION. 

John Rtjskin was born in London, February 8th, 
1819, at his father's house, number 54 Hunter Street, 
Brunswick Square — a locality not far from the British 
Museum. For the greater part of his boyhood, youth, 
and manhood, up to 1871, his home was in Camber- 
well, a rural suburb of London, lying four miles south 
of the Centre and between Sydenham and Chelsea. His 
education was of the sternest Puritan kind, it being the 
purpose of his parents to make a clergyman of him. 
The decrees respecting toys were of Spartan severity. 
At first he had none ; when he got older he had a cart, 
a ball, two boxes of wooden bricks, and a two-arched 
bridge in blocks ; — that was all. At seven he began 
Latin with his mother. His first writings were certain 
compositions and poems printed in imitation of black 
print in a little red-bound book, four by six inches in 
dimensions ; the title-page was as follows, (see " Prae 
terita'') : 

"Harry and Lucy Concluded. Being the 
Last Part of Early Lessons : in four vol- 
uitfES. Vol. I. with copper plates. Printed 
AND Composed by a little boy and also drawn." 

His first piece of scientific composition was a mini>.'- 
alogical dictionary, begun when he was twelve, and writ- 
ten in crystallographic signs that later were unintel- 
ligible even to himself. He began to learn drawing prop- 
er by carefully copying the maps out of a small, old- 
fashioned quarto atlas. His first picture was a Dovei 
Castle, done when he was twelve. Later, his art studies 
were earned on under the direction of Copley Field- 
ing and J. D. Harding, Of an evening, at Heme 
Hill, he was usually placed in a little niche by the 
fireplace, with a table before him to hold his cup and 
l)]atteror his book, while his father read aloud from 
Walter Scott, Shakespeare, Don Quixote, or some other 
classic. 



12 R USKLX A NTHOL G Y. 

When his mother's tuition was ended he was sent 
to the school kept by the Rev. Thomas Dale, and thence 
to Oxford (about 1836). He entered his name as a 
gentleman commoner on the rolls of Christ Church, 
and, under Dr. Buckland, laid the foundation of his 
geological knowledge. 

In 18.57 he accepted the Mastership of the Elemen- 
tary and Landscape School of Drawing, at the Working 
Men's College, in Great Ormond Street, London, ful- 
filling the duties of the office without salary. It was 
for the pupils in this evening school that he wrote his 
J^Iements of Urau-'tiKj. 

In 1867, the Senate of Cambridge University con- 
ferred upon him the degree of LL.D., and at the 
same time he was appointed Rede Lecturer at Cam- 
bridge. In 1869, Mr. Felix Slade bequeathed a large 
sum for the founding of Art Professorships in Oxford, 
Cambridge, and London. Ruskin was thereupon elect- 
ed Slade Professor of the Fine Arts at Oxford ; (re- 
elected in 1876, resigned in 1878 on account of illness.* 
resumed his duties in 1883). 

In 1871, Professor Ruskin bought, without seeing it, 
the old estate of Brantwood (" steep wood "), on Con- 
iston Water, in the Lake District, where he had played 
when a boy of seven years. The fourteen acres of 
•Brantwood are steep, craggy, and picturesque, containing 
streams, heather, nut-trees, and wild flowers, and abut- 
ting directly on Lake Coniston. Ruskin spent about 
!i)>oO,000 on the place before he had it to his mind, 
'1510,000 of this sum going to build a lodge for his pet 
cousin and her children. He is a famous fellow among 
boys and girls, and is voted by everybody to be a cap- 
ital neighbor. 

Professor Ruskin is emotional and nervous in man- 
ner, his large eye at times soft and genial, and again 
quizzing and mischievous in its glance, the mouth thin 
and severe, chin retreating, and forehead prominent. 
He has an iron-grey beard, wears old-fashioned coats, 
sky-blue neck cloths, and gold spectacles ; is rather 
petit, about five feet five in height ; his pronunciation 
as broad as Dundee Scotch, and at times "as indistinct as 

* Thrice has he been at death's door ; i.e. . in the years 1871 . 1878, and 
1S85. 



INTRODUCTION. 13 

Belgravia Cockney." He is one of the most popular 
lecturers in England, and his influence over the stu- 
dents at Oxford is said to have been such that, at one 
time, he purposely avoided (in a measure) their society 
that it might not be thought that he was doing an in- 
justice to his fellow-professors. 

Mr. Stopford Brooke rightly speaks of Ruskin as the 
most original man in England. And the Frenchman, 
Milsand, means the same thing when he says of his 
genius that it is fwitasqae et hizarretnent "aeceiitae. 
" He writes like a consecrated priest of the abstract and 
ideal," said Charlotte Bronte. And Carlyle wrote to 
JEmerson, in the last letter he ever sent him, the sub- 
joined words :— 

"There is nothing going on among us as notable to me 
as those fierce lightning-bolts Ruskin is copiously and 
desperately pouring into the black world of Anarchy all 
around him. No other man in England that I meet has 
in him the divine rage against iniquity, falsity, and base- 
ness that Ruskin has, and that every man ought to 
have."* 

Says Ruskin's old enemy, TJie iSpectator (x\utumn 
of 1384):— 

"No other critic ever occupied such a position. He 
expresses his thoughts on art in words which, in their 
exquisite collocation, their perfection at once of form 
and lucidity, have been rivalled, in oi;r generation, only 
l)y Cardinal Newman. He is one of the best known 
and most appreciated figures in our generation. His old- 
er books are among the treasures of the bibliophile, his 
later works are purchased like scarce jilates, his opinions 
are quoted like texts from a Holy Book." 

The first thing I note in his make and stamp is that he 
is Scotch on his father's side, and possibly also on that 
of his mother. He has Scotch traits — eccentricity, 
waywardness, paradox, quaint frets and freakish knots 
in the grain, a sort of stub-twist in the fibre, a Dant- 
esque imagination, and solemn Covenanter zeal in re- 
ligioc. 

It is as a teach «r of the people that he is preemi- 
nent. He imparts more than a contagious enthusiasm ; 

* Carl^if's roeopnition of Ruskin as a man of genius and prophet- 
power dales fnini isco, the j-ear of the publication of Unto This 
Last. (See Froude's Carlyle in London, II. Chap. XXV.) 



14 RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

he not onl} inspires and uplifts the soul, but clarifies 
the intellect by his lucid and elegant expositions of ab- 
struse subjects. What severe thought on every page of 
his books, presented in how graceful and piquant a 
form ! How many new truths won by hardest toil ! 
How searchingly he probes, unfibres, unjoints, dis- 
solves, enumerates, classifies ! If his life sufficed, you 
would hardly be surprised to find him counting twice 
and thrice and again all the stars of heaven and the 
grains of sand by the sea. The soft cloudlets of the 
upper sky, the toppling cumulus, the shambling dance 
of the no-formed waves (to the slow music of the thun- 
der and the wind), the sprangle and green-shine of 
their hollow-curving crests, the lustre and coloring of 
the breast of a dove, the tintings and shadows of moun- 
tain rock, the intricate curves of leaf and bough — with 
all these he is at home, and for their hidden laws he 
reverently seeks. " Of the facts and aspects of nature," 
says W. M. Rossetti, " Mr. Ruskin is and must re- 
main a teacher of teachers, an expounder to expounders, 
and a poetiaer among those who feel and write poeti- 
cally." 

In the power of placing a subject in a new and start- 
]ing light by means of a clear, well-chosen illustration 
or parallelism Ruskin is unsurpassed. He is a verbal 
antiquary, never satisfied until he has penetrated to the 
root-meaning of the important words he uses. What new 
strength and vividness he gives to Bible texts ! No 
noble or sententious thought so worn by the attrition 
of ages but he will pluck it fondly forth from its dull 
obscurity, cleanse it of rust, and set it a-gleara ?£rain in 
a foil of skilful explanation or glowing eulogy. He 
reads continually between the lines, and has ahaLH of 
challenging accepted statements to see if the^'' ring tvie. 

He is in part a conservative and in part i radiorc^ . 
Yet his radicalism is but a backward-working forse 
he would destroy and change, but only for the pur 
pose of reviving good old ways and tried customs.; 
"What our fathers have told us" no one more rever- 
ently receives. 

His style is impetuou;s and orn?te, his words loaded 
with meaning. Perhaps the word "intensity" 



INTRODUCTION. 15 

best describes liis style.* Repressed passion lurks be- 
neath every page. For terrible and cutting irony he 
is equalled by no other English writer, except it ba 
Swift. His syllogisms are weapons with long range : 
he withholds his conclusion ; approaches it cautiously, 
with subtle concealment and through devious ways; 
apparently starts off in the opposite direction (note 
what Scott calls the national — Scotch — indirection), 
then, with lightning-swift stride and gleam of sword, 
rushes tlirough a side way directly to his goal. 

In studying the art-writings of Kuskin, there are 
three important dates to be borne in mind ; namely, 
1858, 1800, and 1874. Previous to the year 1858 he 
believed the religious spirit to be necessary to su- 
preme art-power. But during the next sixteen years 
(1858-1874) his studies of the great Venetians led 
him to believe that Tintoret and Titian were greater 
painters than Cimabue, Giotto, or Angelico. In 1874, 
however, while copying some of Giotto's work at 
Aijsisi, he discovered, he says {Fors Clavlgera 
Lxxvi.), that that painter was inferior to the Vene- 
tians only in the material sciences of the craft, and 
that, in the real make-up of hifii, he was after all supe- 
rior to them, just on account of his religious faith. 
The third fulcrum date — isCiO — marks the entrance of 
Ruskin into the field of Social Science, and the conse- 
quent partial diversion of his mind from the study of 
nature_and_art^_ - 

The art-teachings of Ruskin may be summed up in a 
few words: '-AH great art is praise," the expression of 
man's delight in God's work. The greatest art is born 
of a noble national morality, and is conditioned upon 
the moral fibre of the workman. The greatest art is 
that which copies nature with the most loving fidelity 
and the most minute finish consistent with noble ima- 
ginative invention, or design. The greatest art can- 
not coexist with smoke, filtli, noise, and mechanism. 

The naive and Biblical [)iety of Ruskin gives to his 
writings a considerable part of their charm. Educated 
in a narrow sectarianism he has gradually adopted 

*Tn one instance {8emmi- and Liliea, 'English edition 1871 ). wishing 
to lay the utmost possilile stress upon a pathetic account of deatU 
by stai-vatiou, he prints the wliole narrative iu blooJ-red ink. 



16 EUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

Broad Church views, without giving up the essentials of 
Christianity, As late as 1H80 he said: "I write as a 
Christian to Christians, that is to say, to persons who 
rejoice in the hope of a literal, perpetual life, with a 
literal, personal, and eternal God." He urges his 
readers to " confess Christ before men." He believes 
literally and unmetaphorically in a Devil, a deceiving 
and evil spirit in nature, the Lord of Lies and the 
Lord of Pain. " I am always quite serious," he writes, 
"when I speak of the Devil." For forty-five 
years he scarcely missed once being at church on Sun- 
day, and never misses the opportunity of talking with 
I'cligious persons. His well-known lavish benevolence 
is a legitimate corollary of his creed : it is the Sermon 
on the Mount put into practice. That he was on the 
London committee for the victualling of Paris in 18T1, 
sliows that his reputation for compassionate benevo- 
lence had become as well known as in the case of a 
Geoi'ge Peabody or a Lady Burdett-Coutts. And in 
truth the purse of no man in England has been more 
ready to open for the relief of suffering merit or genius. 
His benefactions for a single year have amounted to 
over f 70,000 . 

The gist, or marrow, of Mr^ Ruskin's political econo- 
my, or social philosophy, is that in all economic laws and 
measures the moral relations and social affections have 
got to be considered. Political economy, as at present 
taught, is merely a mercantile system of cut and dried 
I'ules for getting rich at the expense of somebody else. 
But political economy, in the large and proper sense, 
does not mean the art of getting rich, but it 
teaches how wisely to order the affairs of a state, and 
produce and distribute the good things of life, especially 
good men and women. It is not a science at all, but 
a system of moral conduct; for industry, frugality, and 
discretion — the tliree foundation-stones of economy — 
are moral qualities. Surely in its general features his 
economic teaching is sound and good. It is only on 
account of the visionary and impracticable nature of 
certain of its details that the whole system has been 
received with ridicule. It was because Ruskin saw 
very clearly the impossibility of getting his favorite 



IXTRODUUTION. 17 

theories ad(ipted by society in general that he formed 
the bold scheme ot' establishing in England (and after- 
ward in various other countries) ideal associations — 
named by him "Guilds of St. George " — around which 
should gradually cluster all the better elements of soci- 
ety. Scattered through his books called Fors Clavi- 
gera you will find the details of this scheme little by 
little set down ; and, if you make a thorough study of 
it, it is probable that you will see as much in it to admire 
as to blame. You will not like his doctrines of coer- 
cion and blind obedience, and you may smile af his 
sumptuary laws and his theory of universal state aid 
for the poor; but the establishment of museums and 
libraries, the advocacy of free trade, organization of 
guarantee trade-guilds for the production and warrant- 
ing of honest work, the insistence on industry, the 
emphasis laid on agricultural work, and the attempt 
to reconcile labor with culture, the reclaiming of 
waste lands and formation of mountain reservoirs 
for rain-water, the noble care of the infirm and 
disabled, lowering of rents in proportion to improve- 
ments, avoidance of usury, and formation of a national 
store of wealth — all this we must emphatically in- 
dorse. It is good and only good, and adapted to tlu' 
mending of broken down civilization. Along such 
lines as these must England move if she would retain 
her power. 

It may well be that the framework of Ruskin's 
Guild will fall to pieces at his death. The great .secu- 
lar energies of society are perpetually beating against 
any forced or artificial organism formed within its 
limits, till it is finally swept away and incorporated in the 
great catholic movements and life of humanity. But 
no matter; what is good in the scheme of St. George 
will survive, Ruskin has blazed a path through the 
wood, made a little garden in the wilderness, dug 
wells of purest water of life. The lesson will not fail 
of its effect, the leaven will work. Is there anything 
in the life of the English people more significant than 
the existence of this very Guild? Like a dewy hill- 
croft or pastoral upland, lifted above the pall of Eng- 
land's smoke ; like sunlight glinting on a troubled sea, 



18 RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

a swirl of rich colors in an arctic night, an oasis in a 
boundless desert, a living fountain in a dry and thirsty 
hind — such, in the midst of the grossness of Anglo- 
American materialism, seeins to some of us the social 
idealism of John Ruskin. 



PREFATORY NOTE. 

With a few exceptions, tiie page references through- 
out this volume are made to the edition of Prof. Rus- 
kin's whole works published by Mr. John B. Alden, 
(1885-6.) The references are, however, approximately 
correct for any edition, and may serve as an index to 
the various topics treated by Ruskin — an index useful 
both to his old admirers and to new readers \ 'ho wish 
to know all that he has written on a given subject.' 
For permission to use the sonnet prefixed to the vol- 
ume I am indebted to the courtesy of its author, Mr. 
H. Bellyse Baildon of Scotland. The parchment- 
covered, "Round-Table" series in which it originally 
appeared, contains, besides the study of Ruskin, ap- 
preciative essays on the protagonists of our own liter 
ature — Whitman and Emerson. W. S. K. 



Part I. -A R 1\ 



A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 



PART I. — ART. 

Section I. — Cardinal Tenets. 



Great art [is] the Art of Dreaming. — Modern 
Painters, IV., p. 384. 

All great art is delicate. — Elements of Drawing, 
p. 8. 

The art, or general productive and formative en- 
ergy, of any country, is an exact exponent of its ethi- 
cal life. You can have noble art only from ngble per- 
sons. — Jjevtiires on Art, p. 22. 

I have had but one steady aim in all that I have 
ever tried to teach, namely — to declare that whatever 
was great in human art was the expression of man's de- 
light in God's work. — The Two Paths, p. 34. 

Thoroughly perfect art is that which proceeds from 
tlie heart, which involves all the noble emotions ; — as- 
sociates with these the head, yet as inferior to the 
lieart ; and the hand, yet as inferior to the heart and 
head; and thus brings out the whole >man. — IVie Ta'o 
Paths, p. 38. 

Great nations write their autobiographies in three 
manuscripts — the book of their deeds, the book of 
their words, and the book of their art. Not one of 
these books can be understood unless we read the two 
others ; but of the three, the only quite trustworthy 
one is the last. The acts of a nation may be triumph- 
ant by its good fortune ; and its words mighty by the 



23 -4 RUSKIX ANTHOLOGY. 

genius of a few of its children : but its art, only by the 
general gifts and common sympathies oi the race. — ■ 
;St. Mark's Itest, p. 3. 

An artist is a person who has submitted to a law 
which it was painful to obey, that he may bestow a de- 
light which it isgracious to bestow. — J-'Vrs, III., p. 5H. 

Art axd Mechanism. — Almost the whole system 
and hope of modern life are founded on the notion that 
you may substitute mechanism for skill, photograph for 
picture, cast-iron for sculpture. That is your main 
nineteenth century faith, or infidelity. You think you 
can get everything by grinding — music, literature, and 
painting. You will find it grievously not so ; you can 
get nothing but dust by mere grinding. — Lectures on 
Art, p. G6. 

The Material Conditioxs of Art. — All art which 
is worth its room in this world, all art which is not a 
piece of blundering refuse, occupying the foot or two 
of earth which, if unencumbered by it, would have 
grown corn or violets, or some better thing, is art 
ii'hicJi 2)roreeds from an individual mind, vorkin^j 
through instruments 'which assist, but do not sujxr- 
sede,the muscular action of the hu/nan hand, upon 
them<(teri(ds which most tenderly receive, and most 
securely retain, the impressions of such honan 
labor. — Stones <f Yenicc, I., p. 40(). 

All fine art requires the application of the whole 
strength and subtlety of the body, so that such art is 
not possible to any sickly person, but involves the ac- 
tion and force of a strong man's arm from the shoulder, 
as well as the deiicatest touch of his finger : and it is 
the evidence that this full and fine strength has been 
spent on it which makes the art executively noble ; so 
that no instrument must be used, habitually, which is 
either too heavy to be delicately restrained, or too 
small and weak to transmit a vigorous impulse ; much 
less any mechanical aid, such as would render the sen- 
sibility of the fingers ineffectual. — Aratra Pentelici, 
p. 96. 

Great Art Not to be Taught bv Rules. — Do you 
fancy a Greek workman ever made a vase by measure- 



CARDINAL TENETS OF ART. 23 

ix.ent I He dashed it from his hand on the wheel, and it 
was beautiful : and a Venetian glass-blower swept you 
a curve of crystal f roiii the end of his pipe ; and Rey- 
nolds or Tintoret swept a curve of color from their pen- 
cils, as a musician the cadence of a note, unerrini;, and 
to be measured, if you please, afterwards, with tlie ex- 
actitude of Divine law. — Etajle's Kest, p. 88. 

Nothing is a great work of art, for the production of 
which either rules or models can be given. Exactly so 
far as architecture works on known rules, and from 
given models, it is not an art, but a manufacture ; and 
it is, of the two procedures, rather less rational (be- 
cause more easy) to copy capitals or mouldings from 
Phidias, and call ourselves architects, than to copy 
heads and hands from Titian, and call ourselves paint- 
ers. — t<tO)i<is of Venice, II., p. 175. 

The labor of the whole Geological Society, for the 
last fifty years, has but now arrived at the ascertain- 
ment of those truths respecting mountain form which 
Turner saw and expressed with a few strokes of a cam- 
el's hair pencil fifty years ago, when he was a boy. 
The knowledge of all the laws of the planetary system, 
and of all the curves of the motion of projectiles, would 
never enal)le the man of science to draw a waterfall or 
a wave ; and all the members of Surgeons' Hall help- 
ing each other could not at this moment see, or repre- 
sent, the natural movement of a human body in vifor- 
ous action, as Tintoret, a poor dyer's son, did two hun- 
dred years ago. — ^to)ie>i of Venice, III., p. 41. 

CoNDiTioN3 OF A ScHooL OF Art. — Nothing may 
ever be made of iron that can as effectually lie made of 
wood or stone; and nothing moved by steam that can 
be as effectually moved by natural "forces. And ob- 
serve, that for all mechanical effort required in social 
life, and in cities, water power is infinitely more than 
enough ; for anchored mills on the large rivers, and 
jiills m.oved by sluices from reservoirs filled by the 
tide, will give you command of any quantity of con- 
stant motive power you need. 

Agriculture by the hand, then, and absolute refusal or 
banishment of unnecessary igneous force, are the first 
conditions of a school of art in any country. And un- 



24 A R USKIN A NTHOLOG Y. 

til you do this, be it soon or late, things will continue 
in that triumphant state to which, for want of finer 
art, your mechanism has brought them ; — that, though 
England is deafened with spinning wheels, her people 
have not clothes — though she is black with digging of 
Cuel, they die of cold — and though she has sold her 
soul for gain, they die of hunger. Stay in that 
triumph, if you choose ; but be assured of this, it is not 
one which the fine arts v/ill ever share with you. — Lec- 
tures OH, Art, p. 80. 

European Youth. — It is certain that the general 
body of modern European youth have their minds oc- 
cupied more seriously by the sculpture and painting of 
the bowls of their tobacco-pipes, than by all the divinest 
work;nrianship and passionate imagination of Greece, 
Rome, and Mediaeval Christendom. — Aratr(t Pente- 
Ucl, p. 48. 

Fine Ak:" and Sweet Nature. — Whatever you 
can afford to spend for education in art, give to good 
masters, and lea'^e them to do the best they can for 
you : and what you <ian afford to spend for the splen- 
dor of your city, buy grass, flowers, sea, and sky with. 
No art of man is possib.'e without those primal Treas- 
ures of the art of God. — F'ors, IV., p. 71. 

Verona. — If I were aske(f to lay my finger, in a 
map of the world, on the spot -of the world's surface 
which contained at this moment th*^. most singular con- 
centration of art-teaching and art-treasure, I should by 
it on the name of the town of Verona. — A Jotj Voi 
Ever, p. 50. 

Art Rooted in the Moral Nature. — In these 
books of mine, their distinctive character, as essays on 
art, is their liringing everything to a root in human 
passion or human hope. Arising first not in any de- 
sire to explain the principles of art, but in the endeavor 
to defend an individual painter from injustice, they 
have been colored throughout — nay, continually altered 
in shape, and even warped and broken, by digressions 
respecting social questions, which had for me an in 
terest tenfold greater than the work I had been forced 
into undertaking. Every principle of painting which I 



CARDINAL TENETS OF ART. 25 

have stated is traeinl to some vital or spiritual fact ; 
and in itiy works on architecture the preference ac- 
corded finally to one school over another, is founded on 
a comparison of their influences on the life of the work- 
man — a question by all other writers on the subject of 
architecture wholly forgotten or despised. — Modern 
Paiuters, V., p. 217. 

Influence of Right Conduct on Art. — Great art 

is the expression, by an art-gift, of a pure soul 

But also, remember, that the art-gift itself is only the 
result of the moral charcxcter of generations. A bad 
woman may have a sweet voice ; but that sweetness of 
voice comes of the past morality of her race. That 
she can sing with it at all, she owes to the determina- 
tion of laws of music by the morality of the past. Ev- 
ery act, every impulse, of virtue and vice, affects in 
any creature, face, voice, nervous power, and vigor and 
harmony of invention, at once. Perseverance in Tight- 
ness of human conduct renders, after a certain num- 
ber of generations, liuman art possible ; every sin 
clouds it, be it ever so little a one ; and persistent vi- 
cious living and following of pleasure render, after a 
certain number of generations, all art impossible. — 

The Merits of Art not Discernible bv All. — 
The multitude can always see the faults of good work, but 
never, unaided, its virtues : on the contrary, it is equal- 
ly quick-sighted to the vulgar merits of bad work, but 
no tuition will enable it to condemn the vices with 
which it has a natural sympathy ; and, in general, the 
blame of them is wasted on its deaf ears. — Art of 
J^ii gland, p. 107, 

Society and the Artist. — The artist should be fit 
ioY t\iQhQ&t ?,0Q.\(ity, a)ul shoidd keep Old of it. . . . 
Society always has a destructive influence upon an art- 
ist : first by its sympathy with his meanest powers ; 
secondly, by its chilling want of understanding of his 
greatest ; and, thirdly, by its vain occupation of his 
time and thoughts. Of course a painter of men must 
be (iniong men ; but it ought to be as a Vv-atclier, not as 
a companion. — ^tonts of Ve/dee, III., p. 44. 



•S> A inrSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

Nature First, Art Second. — The beginning of all 
my own right art work in life (and it may not be un- 
profitable that I should tell you this), depended not 
on my love of art, but of mountains and sea. . . . 
And through the whole of following life, whatever 
power of judgment I have obtained, in art, which I 
am now confident and happy in using, or communi- 
cating, has depended on my steady habit of always 
looking for the subject principally, and for the art 
only as the means of expressing it. — J^arjle^s JVest, p. 
33. 

The Best Art not always Wanted. — The best 
art is not always wanted. Facts are often wanted 
without art, as in a geological diagram ; and art often 
without facts, as in a Turkey carpet. And most men 
have been made capable of giving either one or the oth- 
er, but not both ; only one or two, the very highest, can 
give both. — ^Sto/ies of Venice, II., p. 183. 

Copyists. — The common painter-copyists- who en- 
cumber our European galleries with their easels and 
pots, are, almost without exception, persons too stupid 
to be painters, and too lazy to be engravers. — Ari- 
adne, p. 79. 

Advice to Tourists in Italy. — My general direc- 
tions to all young people going to Florence or Rome 
would be very short: "Know your first volume of 
Vasari, and your two first books of Livy ; look about 
you, and don't talk, nor listen to talking." — Mornings 
in Fiorotce, p. 07. 

Stone Dolls after All. — The greater part of the 
technic energy of men, as yet, has indicated a kind of 
childhood ; and the race becomes, if not more wise, at 
least more manly, with every gained century. I can 
fancy that all this sculpturing and painting of ours may 
be looked back upon, in some distant time, as a kind 
of doll-making, and that the words of Sii Isaac New- 
ton may be smiled at no more : only it will not be for 
stars that we desert our stone dolls, but for men. — Ar- 
atra Pent did, p. 127. 

Dilettante Lovers of Art. — The modern " Ideal " 
(jf high art is a curious mingling of the gracefulness 



CARDINAL TENETS OF ART. 27 

and reserve of the drawing-room with a certain meas- 
ure of classical sensuality. — 3Todern Painters, III., 
p. 84. 

The fashionable lady who will write five or six 
pages in her diary respecting the effect upon her mind 
of such and such an " ideal " in marble, will have her 
drawing-room table covered with Books of Beauty, in 
which the engravings represent the human form in 
every possible aspect of distortion and affectation ; and 
the connoisseur who, in the morning, pretends to the 
most exquisite taste in the antique, will be seen, in the 
evening, in his opera-stall, applauding the least grace- 
ful gestures of the least modest figurante. — Modern 
Painters, III., p. 86. 

Let it be considered, for instance, exactly how 
far the value of a picture of a girl's head by Greuze 
would be lowered in the market, if the dress, which 
now leaves the bosom bare, were raised to the neck ; 
and how far, in the commonest lithograph of some ut- 
terly popular subject, — for instance, the teaching of 
Uncle Tom by Eva — the sentiment which is supposed 
to be excited by the exhibition of Christianity in youth 
is complicated with that which depends upon Eva's 
having a dainty foot and a well-made satin slipper. — 
Modern Painters, III., p. 84. 

The beauty of the Apollo Belvidere, or Venus de 
Medicis, is perfectly palpable to any shallow fine lady 
or fine gentleman, though they would have perceived 
none in the face of an old weather-beaten St. Peter, 
or' a grey-haired " Grandmother Lois." The knowl- 
edge that long study is necessary to produce these reg- 
ular types of the human form renders the facile admir- 
ation matter of eager self-complacency ; the shallow 
spectator, delighted that he can really, and without 
hypocrisy, admire what required much tliought to pro- 
duce, supposes himself endowed with the highest crit- 
ical faculties, and easily lets himself be carried into 
rhapsodies about the " ideal," which, when all is said, 
if they be accurately examined, will be found literally 
to mean nothing more than that the figure has got 
handsome calves to its legs, and a straight nose. — Mod- 
ern Painters, III., p. 85. 



;.>S A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. . 

Your modern mob of English and American tourist*?, 
following a lamplighter through the V^atican to have 
pink light thrown for them on the Apollo Belvidere, 
are farther from capacity of understanding Greek art. 
than the parish charity boy, making a ghost out of a 
turnip, with a candle inside.— T^^^ D'Arno, p. 11. 

The Nude. — I can assert to you as a positive and 
perpetual law, that so much of the nude body as in the 
daily life of the nation may be shown with modesty, 
and seen with reverence and delight — so much, and no 
more, ought to be shov/n by the national arts, either of 
painting or sculpture. What, more than this, either 
art exhibits, will, assuredly, pervert taste, and, in all 
j)robabi!ity, morals. — Eagle s Nest, p. 102. 

We see in a Painting only what we bring to 
IT. — The sensualist will find sensuality in Titian ; the 
thinker will find thought ; the saint, sanctity ; the col- 
orist, color ; the anatomist, form ; and yet the picture 
will never be a popular one in the full sense, for none 
of these narrower people will find their special taste so 
alone consulted, as that the qualities which would en- 
sure their gratification shall be sifted or separated from 
others ; they are checked by the presence of the other 
qualities which ensure the gratification of other men. — 
2yie T>ro Paths, p. 40. 

The Greek Ideal not Beauty but Design. — It is 
an error to suppose that the Greek worship, or seeking, 
was chiefly of Beauty. It was essentially of Right- 
ness and Strength, founded on Forethought: the prin- 
cipal character of Greek art is not Beauty, but Design : 
and the Dorian Apollo-worship and Athenian Virgin- 
worship are both expressions of adoration of divine 
Wisdom and Purity. Next to these great deities rank, 
in power over the national mind, Dionysus and Ceres, 
the givers of human strength and life : then, for heroic 
example, Hercules. There is no Venus-worship among 
the Greek in the great times : and the Muses are es- 
sentially teachers of Truth, and of its harmonies. — 
Crown of Wild Olliie, Lect. II., p. 55. 

Beauty and Truth distinguished. — Nothing is 
more common than to hear people who desire to be 



CARDINAL TENETS OF ART. 25 

thought philosophical, declare that " beauty is truth," 
and "truth is beauty." I would most earnestly beg 
every sensible person who hears such an assertion 
made, to nip the germinating philosopher ui his am- 
biguous bud ; and beg him, if he really believes his own 
assertion, never thenceforward to use two words for the 
same thing. The fact is, truth and beauty are entirely 
distinct, though often related, things. One is a prop- 
erty of statements, the other of objects. The state- 
ment that "two and two make four " is true, but it is 
neither beautiful nor ugly, for it is invisible ; a rose is 
lovely, but it is neither true nor false, for it is silent. 
— 3Iodcrn Pa inters, III., p. 49. 

Discipline in Art Work. — Because Leonardo 
made models of machines, dug canals, built fortifica- 
tions, and dissipated half his art-powei in capricious 
ingenuities, we have many anecdotes of him ; — but no 
picture of importance on canvas, and only a few with- 
ered stains of one upon a wall. But because his pupil, 
or reputed pupil, Luini, labored in constant and suc- 
cessful simplicity, we have no anecdotes of him ; — 
only hundreds of noble works. — Athena, p. 118. 

People affect the Customs of their Ancestors. 
— All other nations have regarded their ancestors with 
reverence as saints or heroes ; but have nevertheless 
thought their own deeds and ways of life the fitting 
subjects for their arts of painting or of verse. We, 
on the contrary, regard our ancestors as foolish and 
wicked, but yet find our chief artistic pleasures in de- 
scriptions of their ways of life. 

The Greeks and media3vals honored, but did not im- 
itate their forefathers ; we imitate, but do not honor. — 
Modern Painters, III., p. 280. 

Great Artists born, not made. — Many critics, 
especially the architects, have found fault with me for 
not "teaching people how to arrange masses;" for not 
" attributing sufficient importance to composition." 
Alas ! I attribute far more importance to it than they 
do ; — so much importance, that I should just as soon 
think of sitting down to teach a man how to write a 
Divina Commcdia, or King Lear, as how to " com- 



30 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

pose," in the true sense, a single building or picture. — 
Pre-RaphaelUism, p. 45. 

Neither you nor I, nor any one, can, in the great ul- 
timate sense, teach anybody how to make a good de- 
sign. ... I could as soon tell you how to make or 
manufacture an ear of wheat, as to make a good artist 
of any kind. First you must find your artist in the 
grain ; then you must plant him ; fence and weed the 
field about him ; and with patience, ground and weath- 
er permitting, you may get an artist out of him — not 
otherwise. — The Tioo Paths, p. 68. 

A certain quantity of art-intellect is born annually 
in every nation, greater or less according to the nature 
and cultivation of the nation, or race of men ; but a 
perfectly fi.xed quantity annually, not increasable by 
one grain. You may lose it, or you may gather it ; 
you may let it lie loose in the ravine, and buried in the 
sands, or you may make kings' thrones of it, and 
overlay temple gates with it, as you choose ; but the 
best you can do with it is always merely sifting, melt- 
ing, hammering, purifying — never creating. . . . And 
the artistical gift in average men is not joined with 
others ; your born painter, if you don't make a jjainter 
of him, won't be a first-rate merchant, or lawyer ; at all 
events, whatever he turns out, his own special gift is 
unemployed by you ; and in no wise helps him in that 
other business. So here you have a certain quantity of 
a particular sort of intelligence, produced for you an- 
nually by providential laws, which you can only make 
use of by setting it to its own proper work, and which 
any attempt to use otherwise involves the dead loss of 
too much human energy. . . . Before a good painter 
can get employment, his mind has always been embit- 
tered, and his genius distorted. A common mind usu- 
ally stoops, in plastic chill, to whatever is asked of it, 
and scrapes or daubs its way complacently into public 
favor. But your great men quarrel with you, and you 
revenge yourselves by starving them for the first half 
of their lives. — ^1 Joy For l£ver, pp. 20, 21. 

A Workman exposes Himself in his Work. — 
If stone work is well put together, it means that a 
thoughtful man planned it, and a careful man cut it, 



CARDINAL TENETS OF ART. 31 

and an honest man cemented it. If it has too much 
ornament, it means that its carver was too greedy of 
pleasure ; if too httle, that he was rude, or insensitive, 
or stupid, and the like. So that when once you have 
learned how to spell these most precious of all legends 
— pictures and buildings — you may read the charac- 
ters of men, and of nations, in their art, as in a mir- 
ror; — nay, as in a microscope, and magnified a hun- 
dredfold ; for the character becomes passionate in the 
art, and intensifies itself in all its noblest or meanest 
delights. Nay, not only as in a microscope, but as un- 
der a scalpel, and in dissection ; for a man may hide 
himself from you, or misrepresent himself to you, ev- 
ery other way ; but he cannot in his work : there, be 
sure, you have him to the inmost. All that he likes, 
all that he sees — all that he can do — his imagination, 
his affections, his perseverance, his impatience, his 
clumsiness, cleverness, everything is there. If the 
work is a cobweb, you know it was made by a spider ; 
if a honeycomb, by a bee ; a worm-cast is thrown up 
by a worm, and a nest wreathed by a bird ; and a 
house built by a man, worthily, if he is worthy, and 
ignobly, if he is ignoble. — AtJieiia, p. 80. 

TiiE English Pound Piece. — As a piece of mere 
die-cuttmg, that St. George is one of the best bits of 
work we have on our money. But as a design — how 
brightly comic it is ! The horse looking abstractedly 
into the air, instead of where precisely it troiild have 
looked, at the beast between its legs : St. George, with 
nothing but his helmet on, (being the last piece of ar- 
mor he is likely to want,*) putting his naked feet, at 
least his feet showing their toes through the buskins, 
well forward, that the dragon may with the greatest 
convenience get a bite at them ; and about to deliver a 
mortal blow at him with a sword which cannot reach 
him by a couple of yards — or, I think, in George III.'s 
piece — with a field-marshal's truncheon. — Fors, I.,pp 
363, 364. 

The Earliest Art Linear. — The earliest art in 
most countries is linear, consisting of interwoven, or 

* For the real difficulty in dragon- fights is not so much to kill your 
dragon, as to see him ; at least to see him in time, it being too prob 
able that he will seevou first. 



32 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

richly spiral and otherwise involved arrangements of 
sculptured or painted lines, on stone, wood, metal, or 
clay. It is generally characteristic of savage life, and 
of feverish energy of imagination. — Lectures on Art, 
p. 89. 

A Grotesque. — A fine grotesque is the expression, 
in a moment, by a series of symbols thrown together in 
bold and fearless connection, of truths which it would 
have taken a long time to express in any verbal way, 
and of which the connection is left for the beholder to 
work out for himself; the gaps, left or overleaped by 
the haste of the imagination, forming the grotesque 
character. — Modern Pahitcrs, III., p. 114. 

The Equestrian Statue of the Duke of Well- 
ington. — You have a portrait of the Duke of Welling- 
ton at the end of the North Bridge — one of the thou- 
sand equestrian statues of Modernism — studied from 
the showriders of the amphitheatre, with their horses 
on their hindlegs in the sawdust. Do you suppose 
that was the way the Duke sat when your destinies de- 
pended on him? when the foam hung from the lips of 
his tired horse, and its wet limbs wei-e dashed with the 
bloody slime of the battlefield, and he himself sat 
anxious in his quietness, grieved in his fearlessness, as 
he watched, scythe-stroke by scythe-stroke, the gather- 
ing in of the harvest of death? You would have done 
something had you thus left his image in the enduring 
iron, but nothing \\o\n .—Lectures on Archltectare, p. 
120. 

The Crystal Palace. — The quantity of bodily 
industry which that Crystal Palace expresses is very 
great. So far it is good. 

The quantity of thought it expresses is, I suppose, a 
single and very admirable thought of Mr. Paxtoii's, 
probably not a bit brighter than thousands of thoughts 
which pass thi'ough his active and intelligent brain 
every hour — that it might be possible to Jbuild a green- 
house larger than ever greenhouse was built before. 
This thought, and some very ordinary algebra, are as 
much as all that glass can represent of human intellect. 
" But one poor half-pennyworth of bread to all this in- 
tolerable deal of sack." — /Stones of Venice^ I., p. 407. 



CARDINAL TENETS OF ART. 33 

TriE Creative Power in Art. — Suppose Adam 
and Eve had been riuide in the softest clay, ever so 
neatly, and set at the foot of the tree of knowledge, 
fastened up to it, quite unable to fall, or do anything 
else, would they have been well created, or in any true 
sense created at all ? . . . 

A poet, or creator, is therefore a person who puts 
things together, not as a watchmaker steel, or a shoe- 
maker leather, but who puts life into them. — Modern 
Painters, V., p. 182. 

Quality, not Quantity of Art Study desir- 
able. — To have well studied one picture by Tintoret, 
one by Luini, one by Angelico, and a couple of Turner's 
drawings, will teach a man more than to have cata- 
logued all the galleries of Europe; while to have drawn 
with attention a porch of Amiens, an arch at Verona, 
and a vault at Venice, will teach him more of architect- 
ure than to have made plans and sections of every big 
heap of brick or stone between St. Paul's and the 
Pyramids. — JS^otes on his ovn DraiDmgs, p. 29. 

Three Rules. — 1. Never encourage the manufact- 
ure of any article not absolutely necessary, in the pro- 
duction of which Invention has no share. 

2. Never demand an exact finish for its own sake, 
but only for some practical or noble end. 

o. Never encourage imitation or copying of any 
kind, except for the sake of preserving record of great 
works. — jS(07ies of 'fenire, II., p. 166. 

Art IS THE same for all Time. — Whatever changes 
may be made in the customs of society, whatever new 
machines we may invent, whatever new manufactures 
we may supply. Fine Art must remain what it was 
two thousand years ago, in the days of Phidias; two 
thousand years hence, it will be, in all its principles, 
and in all its great effects upon the mind of man, just 
the same. — T/ie Two Patlis, p. o9. 

Etruscan Art. — Etruscan art remains in its own 
Italian valleys, of the Arno and upper Tiber, in one 
unbroken series of work, from the seventh century be- 
fore Christ, to this hour, when the country whitewasher 
<*tUl scratches his plaster in Etruscan patterns. All 



34 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

Florentine work of the finest kind — Luca deila Robbia's, 
Ghiberti's, Donatello's, Filippo Lippi's, Botticelli's, Fra 
Angelico's — is absolutely pure Etruscan, merely chang- 
ing its subjects, and representing the Virgin instead of 
Athena, and Christ instead of Jupiter. Every line of 
the Florentine chisel in the fifteenth century is based 
on national principles of art which existed in the 
seventh century before Christ. — Mornings in Flor- 
ence, p. 43. 

Destruction of Works or Art. — Fancy what 
Europe would be now, if the delicate statues and tem- 
ples of the Greeks — if the broad roads and massy walls 
of the Romans — if the noble and pathetic architecture 
of the middle ages, had not been ground to dust by 
mere human rage. You talk of the scythe of Time, 
and the tooth of Time : I tell you Time is scytheless 
and toothless; it is we who gnaw like the worm — we 
who smite like the scythe. 

Do you think that in this nineteenth century it is 
still necessary for the European nations to turn all the 
places where their principal art-treasures are into bat- 
tlefields? .... Imagine what would be the thriving 
circumstances of a manufacturer of some delicate pro- 
duce — suppose glass, or china — in whose workshop and 
exhibition rooms all the workmen and clerks began 
fighting at least once a day, first blowing off the steam, 
and breaking all the machinery they could reacli ; _.nd 
then making fortresses of all the cupboards, and attaclc- 
ing and defending the show-tables, the victorious party 
finally throwing everything they could get hold of out 
of the window, by way of showing their triumph, and 
the poor manufacturer picking up and putting away at 
last a cup here and a handle there. A fine prosperous 
business that would be, would it not ? and yet that is 
precisely the way the great manufacturing firm of the 
world carries on its business. — A Joy J'^or J^cer, p. 
49. 

Symbols. — A symbol is scarcely ever invented just 
when it is needed. Some already recognized and ac- 
cepted form or thing becomes symbolic at a particular 
time. . . . Vibrate but the point of a tool against an 
unbaked vase, as it revolves, set on the wheel — 



CARDINAL TENETS OF ART. 35 

you have a wavy or zigzag line. The vase revolves 
once; the ends of the wavy line do not exactly tally 
when they meet ; you get over the blunder by turning 
one into a head, the other into a tail — and have a sym- 
bol of eternity — if, first, which is wholly needful, you 
have an iden of eternity ! 

Again, the free sweep of a pen at the finish of a 
large letter has a tendency to throw itself into a spiral. 
There is no particular intelligence, or spiritual emotion, 
in the production of this line. A worm draws it with 
his coil, a fern with its bud, and a periwinkle with his 
shell. Yet, completed in the Ionic capital, and arrested 
in the bending point of the acanthus leaf in the Corin- 
thian one, it has become the primal element of beauti- 
ful architecture and ornament in all the ages; and is 
eloquent 'with endless symbolism, representing the 
power of the winds and waves in Athenian work, and 
of the old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan, in 
Gothic work. — lujrs, I., p. 313. 

Importance of Dress to Historical Painting, — • 
I believe true nobleness of dress to be an important 
means of education, as it certainly is a necessity to any 
nation which wishes to possess living art, concerned 
with portraiture of human nature. No good historical 
painting ever yet existed, or ever can exist, where the 
dresses of the people of the time are not beautiful : and 
had it not been for the lovely and fantastic dressing of 
the loth to the 10th centuries, neither French, nor 
Floi'entine, nor Venetian art could have risen to any- 
thing like the rank it reached. Still, even then, the 
best dressing was never tlie costliest ; and its effect 
depended much more on its beautiful and, in early 
times modest, arrangement, and on the simple and 
lovely masses of its color, than on gorgeousnessof clasp 
or embroidery — A Joy For Ever, p, 39. 

Criticism of Art nv Young Men. — Sound criti- 
cism of art is impossible to young men, for it consists 
principally, and in a far more exclusive sense than has 
yet been felt, in the recognition of the facts represented 
by the art. A great artist represents many and abstruse 
fticts ; it is necessary, in order to judge of his works, 
that all those facts sliould be experimentally (not by 



36 A RUSKiy ANTHOLOaV. 

hearsay) known to the observer ; whose recognition of 
tiieni constitutes his approving judgment. A young 
man ca)rnot know them. 

Criticism of art by young men must, therefore, con- 
sist either in the more or less apt retaihng and applica- 
tion of received opinions, or in a more or less immedi- 
ate and dextrous use of the knowledge they already 
possess, so as to be able to assert of given works o{ 
art that they are true up to a certain point ; the prob- 
ability being then that they are true farther than the 
young man sees. 

The first kind of criticism is, in general, useless, if 
not liarmful ; the second is that which the youths will 
employ who are capable of becoming ci-itics in after 
years. 

All criticism of art, at whatever period of life, must 
be partial ; warped more or less by the feelings of the 
person endeavoring to judge. — Arroirs of' the Chace, 
I., p. 41. 

Human Work as Ornament. — Ships cannot be 
made subjects of sculpture. No one pauses in par- 
ticular delight beneath the pediments of the Admiralty ; 
nor does scenery of shipping ever become prominent in 
bas-relief without destroying it : witness the base of 
the Nelson pillar. \t may be, and must be sometimes, 
introduced in severe subordination to the figure subject, 
but just enough to indicate the scene; sketched in the 
lightest lines on the background ; never with any at- 
tempt at reahzation, never with any equality to the 
force of the figures, unless the whole purpose of the 
subject be picturesque. . . . That is to say, when the 
mind is intended to derive part of its enjoyment from 
the parasitical qualities and accidents of the thing, not 
from the heart of the thing itself. 

And thus, while we must regret the flapping sails in 
the death of Nelson in Trafalgar Square, we may yet 
most heartily enjoy the sculpture of a storm in one of 
the bas-reliefs of the tomb of St. Pietro Martire in the 
church of St. Eustorgio at Milan, where the grouping 
of the figures is most fancifully conjplicated by the 
under-cut cordage of the vessel. 

In all these instances, however, observe that the per- 
mission to represent the human work as an ornament, 



CARDINAL TENETS OF ART. 37 

is conditional on its being necessary to the representa- 
tion of a scene, or explanation of an action. On no 
terms whatever could any such subject be independently 
admissible, 

I conclude, then, with the reader's leave, that all or- 
nament is base which takes for its subject human work, 
that it is utterly base — painful to every rightly-tonec\ 
mind, without perhaps immediate sense of the reason, 
but for a reason palpable enough when we do think 
of it. For to carve our own work, and set it up for ad 
miration, is a miserable self-complacency, a contentment 
in our own wretched doings, when we might have been 
looking at God's doings. And all noble ornament is the 
exact reverse of this. It is the expression of man's de- 
light in God's work. — iSto/tct; of Vtiitce, I., p. "ilS- 
218. 

No great art ever was, or can be, employed in the 
careful imitation of the work of man as its principal 
subject. That is to say, art will not bear to be redupli- 
cated. A ship is a noble thing, and a cathedral a noble 
thing, but a painted ship or a painted cathedral is 
not a noble thing. ... A wrecked ship, or shattered 
boat, is a noble subject, while a ship in full sail, or a 
perfect boat, is an ignoble one; not merely because the 
one is by reason of its ruin more picturesque than the 
other, but because it is a nobler act in man to meditate 
upon Fate as it conquers his work, than upon that work 
itself. More complicated in their anatomy than the 
human frame itself, so far as that frame is outwardly 
discernil)le ; liable to all kinds of strange accidental 
variety in position and movement, yet in each position 
subject to imperative laws which can only be fol- 
lowed by unerring knowledge ; and involving in the 
roundings and foldings of sail and hull, delicacies of 
drawing greater than exist in any other inorganic object, 
except perhaps a snow-wreath — they [ships] present, ir- 
respective of sea or sky, or anything else around them, 
difficulties which can only be vanquished by draught- 
manship quite accomplished enough to render even the 
subtlest lines of the human face and form. But the 
artist who has once attained such skill as this will not 
devote it to the drawing of ships. He who can paint 
the face of St. PauT will not elaborate the parting tim- 



38 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

bers of the. vessel in which he is wrecked. — ILirhors of 
England. 

Photography. — Photography cannot exhibit the 
character of large and finished sculpture ; but its au- 
dacity of shadow is in perfect harmony with the more 
roughly picturesque treatment necessary in coins, — 
Aratra Pentellci, p. G. 

Photographs are not true, though they seem so. 
They are merely spoiled nature. It is not human design 
you are looking for, there is more beauty in the next 
wayside bank than in all the sun-blackened paper you 
could collect in a lifetime. — Lectures on Art, p. 118. 

My chemical friends, if you wish ever to know any- 
thing rightly concerning the arts, I very urgently ad- 
vise you to throv/ all your vials and washes down the 
gutter-trap ; and if you will ascribe, as you think it so 
clever to do, in your modern creeds, all virtue to the 
sun, use that virtue through your own heads and fin- 
gers, and apply your solar energies to draw a skilful 
line or two, for once or twice in your life. You may 
learn more by trying to engrave, like Goodall, the tip 
of an ear, or the curl of a lock of hair, than by photo- 
graphing the entire population of the United States 
of America — black, white, and neutral-tint, — Ariadne, 
p. 70. 

Raphael, Michael Angelo, and Tintoret. — The 
works of Raphael, Michael Aiigelo, and Tintoret . . . 
are the most splendid efforts yet made by human crea- 
tures to maintain the dignity of states with beautiful 
colors, and defend the doctrines of theology with ana- 
tomical designs. — Relation between 3Iichael Angelo 
and Tintoret, p. 8. 

Nearly every existing work by Michael Angelo is an 
attempt to execute something beyond his power, 
coupled with a fevered desire that his power may be ac- 
knowledged. He is always matching himself either 
against the Greeks whom he cannot rival, or against 
rivals whom he cannot forget. He is proud, yet not 
proud enough to be at peace; melancholy, yet not 
dee})ly enough to be raised above petty pain ; and 
strong beyond all his companion workmen, yet never 



CARDINAL TENETS OF ART. S9 

strong enough to coniniand liis temper, or limit his 
aims, 

Tintoret, on the contrary, works in the consciousness 
of supreme strengtii, whicli cannot be wounded by neg- 
lect, and is only to be thwarted by time and space. 
He knows precisely all that art can accomplish under 
given conditions ; determines absolutely how much of 
what can be done, he will hmiself for the moment 
choose to do ; and fulfills his purpose with as much 
ease as if, through his human body, were working the 
great forces of nature. . . . 

Both Raphael and Michael Angelo are thus, in the 
most vital of all points, separate from the great Vene- 
tian. They are always in dramatic attitudes, and al 
\vays appealing to the public for praise. They are the 
leading athletes in the gymnasium of the arts: and the 
crowd of the circus cannot take its eyes away from 
them, while the Venetian walks or rests with the sim- 
plicity of a wild animal ; is scarcely noticed ia his oc- 
casionally swifter motion ; when he springs, it is to 
please himself ; and so calmly that no one thinks of 
estimating the distance covered. — Relation heUoeen 
Michael Aiujelo and Tintoret, '^V-'^^y l-l- 

You are accustomed to think the figures of Michael 
Angelo sublime — because they are dark, and colossal, 
and involved, and mysterious — because in a word, they 
look sometimes like shadows, and sometimes like 
mountains, and sometimes like spectres, but never like 
human beings. Believe me, yet once more, in what i 
told you long since — man can invent nothing nobler 
than humanity. . . . 

All that shadowing, storming, and coiling of his, 
when you look into it, is mere stage decoration, and 
that of a vulgar kind. . . . 

Now, though in nearly all his greater pictures, Tin- 
toret is entirely carried away by his sympathy with 
Michael Angelo, and conquers him in his own field y — 
outflies him in motion, outnumbers him in multitude, 
outwits him \:\ fancy, and outflames him in rage — he 
can be just as gentle as he is strong: and that Para- 
dise, though it is the largest picture in the world, 
without any question, is also the thoughtfullest, and 
most precious. ... 



40 .4 RUSKIX ANTHOLOGY. 

I have no hesitation in asserting this picture to be Ly 
far the most precious work of ait of any kind whatso- 
ever, now existing in the world. — llclailn}! hetweeii 
Michael A»fjdo and T'lntoret.^^^. 20-30. 

The Study of Anatomy destructive to Art. — 
Don't think you can paint a peach, because you know 
there's a stoiie inside ; nor a face, because you know a 
skull is. — Laxrs of Fesole, p. 19. 

The study of anatomy is destructive to art. . . . 
Mantegna and Diirer were so polluted and paralyzed 
by the study of anatomy that the former's best works 
(the magnificent mythology of th: \"icosin the Louvre, 
for instance) are entirely revolting to all women and 
children ; while Diirer never could draw one beautiful 
female form crfaee; and, of his important plates, only 
four, the JMelencholia, St. Jerome in his Study, St. 
Hubert, and Kniglit and Death, are of any use for 
popular instruction, because in these only, the figures 
being fully draped or armed, he was enabled to think 
and feel rightly, being d.'livered from the ghastly toil 
of bone-delineation — EcgMs JVest, J'nfare. 

I am now certain that the greater the intellect, the 
more fataljare the forms of degradation to which it be- 
comes liable in the course of anatomical study ; and 
that to Michael Angelo, of all men, the mischief was 
greatest, in destroying liis religious passion and imag- 
ination, and leading him to make every spiritual con- 
ception subordinate to the display of his knowledge of 
the body. — Eagles ITe.'it, p. 00. 

All the main work of the eagle's eye is in looking 
down. To Keep the sunshine above from teasing it, 
che cyo is put under a triangular penthouse, which is 
precisely the most characteristic thing in the bird's 
whole aspect. Its hooked beak does not materially 
distinguish it from a cockatoo, but its hooded eye does. 
But that projection is not accounted for in the skull; 
and, so little does the anatomist care about it, that you 
may hunt through the best modern v/orks on orni- 
thology, and you will find eagles drawn with all man- 
ner of dissections of skulls, claws, clavicles, sternums, 
and gizzards ; but you won't find so much as one poor 



CARDINAL TENETS OF ART. 41 

falcon drawn with a falcon's eye. — Eagles JVest, p. 

08. 

Holbein draws skeleton after skeleton, m every 
possible gesture ; but never so much as counts their 
ribs ! He neither knows nor cares how many ribs a 
skeleton has. There are always enough to rattle. . . 

Monstrous, you think, in impudence — Holbein for 
his carelessness, and I for defending him ! Nay, 1 
triumph in him; nothing has ever more pleased me 
than this grand negligence. Nobody wants to know 
how many ribs a skeleton has, any more than how many 
bars a gridiron has, so long as the one can breathe, and 
the other broil; and still less, when the breath and the 
fire are both out. — Ariadne, p. 98. 

Art in the History of Nations. — The great lesson 
of history is, that all the fine arts hitherto— having 
been supported by the selfish power of the noblesse, and 
never having extended their range to the comfort or the 
relief of the mass of the people— the arts, I say, thus 
practised, and thus matured, have only accelerated the 
ruin of the States they adorned.— 77ie 2\co Paths, p. 73. 
You find that the nations which possessed a refined 
art were always subdued by those who possessed none : 
you find the Lydian subdued by the Mede; tho Athe- 
nian by the Spartan ; the Greek by the Roman ; the 
Roman by the Goth ; the Burgundian by the Switzer : 
but you find, beyond this— that even where no attack 
by anv external pow?r has accelerated the catastrophe 
of the" state, the period in which mf given people reach 
their highest power in art isprecisely that in which they 
appear to sign the warrant of their own ruin ; and that, 
from the moment in which a perfect statue appears in 
Florence, a perfect picture in Venice, or a perfect fresco 
in Rome, from that hour forward, probity, industry, 
and courage seem to be exiled from their walls, and 
they perish in a sculpturesque paralysis, or a many- 
colored corruption. . . . 

And finally, while art has thus shown itself always 
active in the service of luxury and idolatry, it has also 
been strongly directed to the exaltation of cruelty. A 
nation which lives a pastoral and innocent life never 
decorates the shepherd's staff or the plough-handle, but 



43 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

races who live by depredation and slaughter nearly al- 
ways bestow exquisite ornaments on the quiver, the 
helmet, and the spear. — TJte Tiro Paths, pp. 12, 13. 

Wherever art is practised for its own sake, and the 
delight of the workman is in what he does and 2)''odaces, 
instead of what he interprets or e.r/iibits — -there art 
has an influence of the most fatal kind on brain and 
heart, and its issues, if long so'pursued, in the destriir- 
tioii both of iiiteUertxal poircr and morol prlneipJi: ; 
whereas art, devoted humbly and self-foi-getf ally to the 
clear statement and record of the facts of the universe, 
is always helpful and beneficent to mankind, full of 
comfort, strength, and salvation. — The Two Paths, 
p. 17. 

The art which is especially dedicated to natural fact 
always indicates a peculiar gentleness and tenderness of 
mind, and all great and successful work of that kind 
will assuredly be the production of thoughtful, sensi- 
tive, earnest, kind men, large in their views of life, and 
full of various intellectual power. — Tlie Ttco Paths, 
p. 46. 

All great nations first manifest themselves as a pure 
and beautiful animal race, with intense energy and im- 
agination. They live lives of hardship by choice, and 
by grand instinct of manly discipline : the}^ become 
fierce and irresistible soldiers ; the nation is always its 
own army, and their king or chief head of government, 
is always their first soldier. . . . 

Then, after their great military period, comes the 
domestic period ; in which, without betraying the disci- 
pline of war, they add to their great soldiership the 
delights and possessions of a delicate and tender home- 
life : and then, for all nations, is the time of their per- 
fect art, which is the fruit, the evidence, the reward of 
their national idea of character, developed by the fin- 
ished care of the occupations of peace. That is the 
history of all true art that ever was, or can be : pal- 
pably the history of it — unmistakably — written on the 
forehead of it in letters of light — in tongues of fire, by 
which the seal of virtue is branded as deep as ever iron 
burnt into a convict's flesh the seal of crime. But al- 
ways hitherto, after the great period, has followed the 



CARDINAL TENETS OF ART. 43 

day of luxury, and pursuit of tlie arts for pleasure 
only. And all has so ended. — AtJicna, p. 82. 

"Fear Grace; Fear Dehcatksse." — Examine the 
history of nations, and you will find this great fact 
clear and unmistakable on the front of it — that good 
Art has only been produced by nations who rejoiced in 
it ; fed themselves with it, as if it were bread ; basked 
in it, as if it were sunshine ; shouted at the sight of it ; 
danced with the delight of it ; quarrelled for it ; fought 
for it ; starved for it ; did, in fact, precisely the opposite 
with it of what we want to do with it — the}^ made it to 
keep, and we to sell. . . . 

While most distinctly you may perceive in past his- 
tory that Art has never been produced, except by na- 
tions who took pleasure in it, just as assuredly, and 
even more plainly, you may perceive that Art has 
always destioyed the power and life of those who pur- 
sued it for pleasure only. . . . 

While men possess little and desire less, they remain 
brave and noble : while they are scornful of all the arts 
of luxury, and are in the sight of other nations as bar- 
barians, their swords are irresistible and their sway 
illimitable : but let them become sensitive to the re- 
finements of taste, and quick in the capacities of pleas- 
ure, and that instant the fingers that had grasped the 
iron rod, fail from the golden sceptre. . . . 

The only great painters in our schools of painting in 
England have either been of portrait — Reynolds and 
Gainsborough ; of the philosophy of social life — Ho- 
garth ; or of the facts of nature in landscape — Wilson 
and Turner. In all these cases, if I had time, I could 
show you that the success of the painter depended on 
his desire to convey a truth, rather than to produce a 
merely beautiful picture ; that is to say, to get a like- 
ness of a man, or of a place ; to get some moral prin- 
ciple rightly stated, or some historical character rightly 
described, rather than merely to give pleasure to the 
eyes. . . . 

You may fancy, perhaps, that Titian, Veronese, and 
Tintoret were painters for the sake of pleasure only : 
but in reality they were the only painters who ever 
sought entirely to master, and who did entirely master, 
the truths of light and shade as associated with color, 



44 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

in the noblest of all physical created things, the 
human form. They were the only men who ever painted 
the human body; all other painters of the great schools 
are mere anatomical draughtsmen compared to them ; 
rather makers of maps of the body, than painters of it. 
— Ciunhi'hhje Tnavyural Address, pp. 9, 13, 19. 

Greek Art. — Greek art . . . is all parable, but 
Gothic, as distinct from it, literal. . . . From classic 
art unless you understand it, you may get nothing ; 
from romantic art, even if you don't understand it, you 
get at least delight. — Val Tf Arno, p. 98. 

The Greeks have not, in any supreme way, given to 
their statues character, beauty, or divine strength, 
[or divine sadness.] [Yet] from all vain and mean 
decoration — ail weak and monstrous error, the Greeks 
rescue the forms of man and beast, and sculpture them 
in the nakedness of their true flesh, and with the fire of 
their living soul. . . . 

The Greeks have been the origin not only of all 
broad, mighty, and calm conception, but of all that is 
divided, delicate and tremulous; "variable as the 
shade, by the light quivering aspen made." To them, 
as first leaders of ornamental design, belongs, of right, 
the praise of glistenings in gold, piercings in ivory, 
stainings in purple, burnishings in dark blue steel; of 
the fantasy of the Arabian roof — quartering of the 
Christian shield — rubric and arabesque of Christian 
scripture. — Aratra Pentidici, pp. 127, 129, 131. 

Greek art as a first, not a final, teacher. . . . 
Greek faces are not particularly beautiful. Of the 
much nonsense against which you are to keep your ears 
shut, that which is talked to you of the Greek ideal of 
beauty, is among the absolutest. There is nor. a sin- 
gle instance of a very beautiful head left by the high- 
est school of Greek art. On coins, there is even no 
approximately beautiful one. The Juno of Argos is a 
virago; the Athena of Athens, grotesque; the Athena 
of Corinth is insipid ; and of Thurium sensual. The 
Siren Ligeia, and fountain of Arethusa, on the coins of 
Terina and Syracuse, are prettier, but totally without 
expression, and chiefly set off by their well-curled liair. 
You might have expected something subtle in Mer- 



CARDINAL TENETS OF ART. 45 

curies ; but the Mercury of ^nus is a very stupid^ 
looliing fellow, in a cap like a bowl, with a knob on the 
top of it. Tiie Bacchus of Thasos is a drayman with 
his hair poniatum'd. The Jupiter of Syracuse is, how- 
ever, calm and refined ; and the Apollo of Clazomente 
would have been impressive, if he had not come down 
to us much flattened by friction. But on the whole, 
the merit of Greek coins does not primarily depend on 
beauty of features, nor even, in the period of highest 
art, that of the statues. You may take the Venus of 
Melos as a standard of beauty of the central Greek 
type. She has tranquil, reglilar, and lofty features; 
but could not hold her own for a moment against the 
beauty of a simple English girl, of pure race and kind 
heart. . . . That sketch of four cherub heads from an 
English girl, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, at Kensington, 
is an incomparably finer thing than ever the Greeks 
did. Ineffably tender in the touch, yet Herculean in 
power; innocent, yet exalted in feeling; pure in color 
as a pearl; reserved and decisive in design, as this 
Lion crest — if it alone existed of such — if it were a 
picture by Zeuxis, the only one left in the world, and 
you built a shrine for it, and were allowed to see it 
only seven days in a year, it alone would teach you 
all of art that you ever needed to know. . . . 

Then, what are the merits of this Greek art, which 
make it so exemplary for you ? Well, not that it is 
beautiful, but that it is Right. All that it desires to 
do, it does, and all that it does, does well. You will 
find, as you advance in the knowledge of art, that its 
laws of self-restraint are very marvelous ; that its 
peace of heart, and contentment in doing a simple 
thing, with only one or two qualities, restrictedly de- 
sired, and sufficiently attained, are a most wholesome 
element of education for you, as opposed to the wild 
writhing, and wrestling, and longing for the moon, and 
tilting at wind-mills, and agony of eyes, and torturing 
of fingers, and general spinning out of one's soul into 
fiddle-strings, which constitute the ideal life of a mod- 
ern artist. . . . 

Half the powcn- and imagiiifition of every other 
school depend on a ccn-tain feverish terror mingling with 



46 A nUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

their sense of beauty; — the feeling that a child has in a 
dark room, or a sick person in seeing ugly dreams. 
But the Greeks never have ugly dreams. They can- 
not draw anything ugly when they try. Sometimes 
they put themselves to their wits'-end to draw an ugly 
thing — the Medusa's head, for instance — but tliey 
can't do it — not they — because nothing frightens 
them. They widen the mouth, and grind the teeth, 
and puff the cheeks, and set the eyes a-goggling; and 
the thing is only ridiculous after all, not the least 
dreadful, for there is no dread in their hearts. Pen- 
siveness; amazement; often deepest grief and deso- 
lateness. All these: but terror never. Everlasting 
calm in the presence of all fate ; and joy such as they 
could win, not indeed in a perfect beauty, but beauty 
at perfect rest. — Athena, pp. 154-128. 

The Greek, or Classic, and the Romantic Styles, 
— Without entering into any of the fine distinctions be- 
tween these two sects, this broad one is to be observed 
as constant: that the writers nnd painters of the Class- 
ic school set down nothing but what is known to be 
true, and set it down in the perf^ctest manner possible 
in their way, and are thenceforward authorities from 
whom there is no appeal. Romantic writers and paint- 
ers, on tlie contrary, express themselves under the im- 
pulse of passions which may indeed lead them to the 
discovery of new truths, or to the more delightful ar- 
rangement or presentment of things already known : 
but their work, however brilliant or lovely, remains 
imperfect, and without authority. — Val U'Arno, p. DfK 

ART AND MAN IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 

A degree of personal beauty, both male and female, 
was attained in the Middle Ages, with which classical 
periods could show nothing for a moment comparable : 
and this beauty was set forth by the most perfect 
splendor, united with grace, in dress, which the human 
race have hitherto invented. The strength of tlieir 
art-genius was directed in great part to this object ; 
and their best workmen and most brilliant fanciers 
were employed in wreathing the mail or embroidei'ing 



CAnnixA!. ThJ.xprrs of art. 47 

the robe, Tlie exquisite arts of enamelling and clias- 
ing metal enabled them to make the armor as radiant 
and delicate as the plumage of a tropical bird; and the 
most various and vivid imaginations were displayed in 
the alternations of coloi', and fiery freaks of form, on 
shield and crest; so that of all the beautiful things 
which the eye:^ of men could fall upon, in the world 
about them, the most beautiful must have been a young 
knight riding out in moi-ning sunshine, and in faithful 
hojx". 

" His broad, clear brow in sunlight glowed ; 
On burnished liooves his war-horse trode ; 
From underneath his lielniet flowed 
His coal-black curls, as on lie rode. 
All in the blue, unclouded weather, 
Tliick jewelled shone the saddle leather ; 
The I'.eliuet and tlie helmet featlier 
Burned like one burning flame together ; 
And the gemmy bridle glittered free, 
Like to some brancli of stars we see 
Hung in the golden galaxy." 

Now, the effect of this superb presence of human 
beauty on men in general was, exactly as it had been in 
(xreek times, first, to turn their thoughts and glances 
in great part away from all other beauty but that, and 
to make the grass of the field take to them always 
more or less the aspect of a carpet to dance upon, a 
lawn to tilt upon, or a serviceable crop of hay; and, 
secondly, in what attention they paid to this lower na- 
ture, to make them dwell exclusively on what was 
graceful, symmetrical, and bright in color. All that 
was rugged, rough, dark, wild, unterminated, they re- 
jected at once, as the domain of "salvage men" and 
monstrous giants : all that they admired was tender, 
bright, balanced, enclosed, svmmetrical, — M<xleni 
J*<i inters, III., pp. 219, 220. 

[Yet they regarded mountains as places fit for pen- 
ance and prayer; but] our modern society in general 
goes to the mountains, not to fast, but to feast, and 
leaves their glaciers covered with chicken-bones and 
egg-shells. 



48 A RUSKLW AXTHOLOGT. 

Comicetcd with this want of any sense of solemnity 
ill mountain scenery, i.i a general profanity cf temper 
in regarding all the lest (;f nature ; that i ^ to say, a to- 
tal absence of faith in the presence of any deity tliere- 
in. Whereas the mediseval never painted a cloud, but 
with the purpose of placing an angel in it ; and a 
Greek never entered a wood without expecting to meet 
a god in it ; ice should think the appearance of an angel 
in the cloud wholly unnatural, and should be seriously 
surprised Ijy meeting a god anywhere. — Jfodern 
PainterH, III., p. )ll(S. 

The art of this day is not merely a more knowing 
art than that of the thirteenth century — it is altogether 
another art. Between the two there is a great gulph, a 
distinction forever ineffaceable. The change from one 
to the other was not that of the child into the man, as 
we usually consider it ; it was that of the chrysalis 
into the butterfly. There was an entire change in the 
habits, food, method of existence, and heart of the 
whole creature. . . . This is the great and broad fact 
which distinguishes modern art from old art : that all an- 
cient art 'w&^reUtjious, and all modern art is/>y'o/Wy/t'. 
In mediaeval art, thought is the first thing, execution 
the second ; in modern art execution is the first thing, 
and thought the second. And again, in mediseval art, 
truth is first, beauty second ; in modern art, beauty is 
first, truth second. The mediaeval principles led uj^ to 
Raphael, and the modern principles lead doicn from 
him. — Lectures on Arcldtecture, p. 110. 

The art of the thirteenth century is the foundation 
of all art — not merely the foundation, but the root of 
it ; that is to say, succeeding art is not merely built 
upon it, but was all comprehended in it, and is devel- 
oped out of it. — Lectures on Architect ure, p. 84. 

Joy and Brightness of Medi.eval Times. — The 
Middle Ages had their wars and agonies, but also in- 
tense delights. Their gold was dashed v/ith blood ; 
but ours is sprinkled with dust. Their life was inter- 
woven with white and purple ; ours is one seamless 
stuff of brown. Not that we are without apparent fes- 
tivity, but festivity more or less forced, mistaken, em- 



CARDINAL TESErS OF ART. 49 

bittered, incouiplote — nut of the heart. — Jfodo'n 
Painters, III., p. 270. 

Longfellow a good Interpreter of the Middle 
Ages. — Longfellow, in the Golden Legend, has entered 
more closely into the temper of the Monk, for good and 
for evil, than ever yet theological writer or historian, 
though they may have given their life's labor to the 
analysis : and, again, Robert Browning is unerring in 
every sentence he writes of the Middle Ages ; always 
vital, right, and profound ; so that in the matter of 
art, with which we have been specially concerned, there 
is hardly a principle connected with the mediseval tem- 
per, that he has not struck upon in those seemingly 
careless and too rugged rhymes of his. — Jlodtrn 
Painters, IV., p. 392. 

Pisa in the Middle Ages. — Fancy what was the 
scene which presented itself, in his afternoon walk, 
to a designer of the Gothic school of Pisa — Nino 
Pisano, or any of his men. 

On each side of a bright river he saw rise a line of 
brighter palaces, arched and pillared, and inlaid with 
deep red porphyry, and with serpentine ; along the quays 
before their gates were riding troops of knights, noble 
in face and form, dazzling in crest and shield ; horse 
and man one labyrinth of quaint color and gleaming 
light — the purple, and silver, and scarlet fringes flow 
ing over the strong limbs and clashing mail, like sea- 
waves over rocks at sunset. Opening on each side 
from the river were gardens, courts, and cloisters ; long 
successions of white pillars among wreaths of vine ; 
leaping of fountains through buds of pomegranate and 
orange : and still along the garden-paths, and under 
and through the crimson of the pomegranate shadows, 
moving slowly, groups of the fairest women tha' Italy 
ever saw — fairest, because purest and thoughtfullest , 
trained in all high knowledge, as in all courteous art— in 
dance, in song, in sweet wit, in lofty learning, in loftier 
courage, in loftiest love — able alike to cheer, to enchant, 
or save, the souls of men. Above all this scenery of 
jierfect human life, rose dome and bell-tower, burning 
with white alabaster and gold ; lieyond dome and bell- 
tower the slopes of mighty hills, hoary with olive ; far 



so A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

in the north, above a purple sea of peaks of solemn 
Apennine, the clear, sharp-cloven Carrara mountains 
sent up their steadfast flames of tnarble summit into 
amber sky ; the great sea itself, scorching with expanse 
of light, stretching from their feet to the Gorgonian 
isles; and over all these, ever present, near or far — 
seen through the leaves of vine, or imaged with all its 
march of clouds in the Arno's stream, or set with its 
depth of blue close against the golden hair and burning 
cheek of lady and knight — that untroubled and sacred 
sky, which was to all men, in those days of innocent 
faith, indeed the unquestioned abode of spirits, as the 
earth was of men ; and which opened straight through its 
gates of cloud and veils of dew into the awfulness of 
the eternal world ; — a heaven in which every cloud 
that passed was literally the chariot of an angel, and 
every ray of its Evening and Morning streamed from 
the throne of God. . . . 

[Yet] all that gorgeousness of the Middle Ages, 
beautiful as it sounds in description, noble as in many re- 
spects it was in reality, had, nevertheless — for foimdation 
and for end, nothing but the pride of life — the pride of 
the so-called superior classes ; a pride which supported 
itself by violence and robbery, and led in the end to 
the destruction both of the arts themselves and the 
States in v.'hich they flourished. — The Two Paths, pp. 
71-73. 



IMITATION AND FINISH. 

Finishing means in art simply telling more truth. — 
Modern Painters, III., p. 144. 

You must not draw all the hairs in an eyelash ; not 
because it is sublime to generalize them, but because it 
is impossible to see them. ^vlric^/MC, p. 100. 

Greek art, and all other art, is fine 'when it 
makes a tiuuCs face as like a niaiis face as it 
can. ... 

Get that well driven into your heads : and don't let 
it out again at your ])eril. 

Having got it well in, you may then farther under 



CARDINAL TENETS OF ART. 51 

stand, safely, that there is a great deal of secondary 
work in pots, and pans, and floors, and carpets, and 
shawls, and architectural ornament, which ought, es- 
sentially, to be unlike reality, and to depend for its 
charm on quite other qualities than imitative ones. 
But all such art is inferior and secondary— much of it 
more or less instinctive and animal, and a civilized 
human creature can only learn its principles rightly, by 
knowing those of great civilized art first — which is 
always'the representation, to the utmost of its power, 
of whatever it has got to show — made to look as like 
the thing as possible.*— J ?/ie«rt, pp. 122, 123. 

iVo tndt/ great man can be named in the arts— 
but it is that of one who finished to his utmost. 
Take Leonardo, Michael Angelo, and Raphael for a triad, 
to begin with. They all completed their detail with 
such subtlety of touch and gradation, that, in a careful 
drawing by any of the three, you cannot see where 
the pen'cil ceased to touch the paper ; the stroke of it is 
so tender, that, when you look close to the drawing you 
can see nothing ; you see the effect of it a liitle way 
back ! Thus tender in execution — and so complete in 
detail, that Leonardo must needs draw every several 
vein in the little agates and pebbles of the gravel 
under the feet of the St. Anne in the Louvre.— J7o(/- 
ern Painters, IIL, p. 143. 

Every quarter of an inch in Turner's drawings will 
bear magnifying ; much of the finer work in them can 
hardly be traced, except by the keenest sight, until it is 
magnified. In his painting of Ivy Bridge, the veins 
are drawn on tiie wings of a butterfly, not above three 
lines in diameter ; and in one of his smaller drawings 
of Scarborough, in my own possession, the muscle- 
.shells on the beach are rounded, and some shown as 
shut, some as open, though none are as large as one of 
the* letters of this tvpe ; and yet this is the man who 
was thought to belong to the " dashing " school, literally 
because most people had not patience or delicacy of 

" * " The Fine Arts, too,' like the coarse, and every art of Man's Gort- 
given Ficuhy. are to understand that they are *^^"t hither not to fth 
Sncl dance, but to speak and work : and on the whole, that God A 
miffhtv-s Farts such as given us, are the one pabu um which xmU 
yUw then, any nourishment in this world.-Ccn7^?., - Latter-Da>j. 
Pamphlets," VIII. 



53 A RUSKIX AXTHOLOGY. 

sight enough to trace his endless detail. — Modern 
Painters, III., p. 142. 

Veronese often [draws] a finished profile, or any 
other portion of the contour of a face, with one line, 
not afterwards changed. — Lectures on Art, p. 35. 

Strokes by Tintoret or Paul Veronese, which were 
done in an instant, and look to an ignorant spectator 
merely like a violent dash of loaded color (and are, as 
such, imitated by blundering artists), are, in fact, 
modulated by the brush and finger to that degree of 
delicacy that no single grain of the color could be taker 
from the touch without injury; and little golden parti- 
cles of it, not the size of a gnat's head, have important 
share anu function in the balances of light in a picture 
perhaps fifty feet long. Nearly everi/ other rule appli- 
cable to art has some exception but this. This has ab- 
solutely none. All great art is delicate art, and all 
coarse art is bad art. — Modern Painters, III., p. 5G. 

When once we begin at all to unde^-^tand the hand- 
ling of any truly great executor, such as that of any of 
the three great Venetians, of Correggio, or Turner, the 
awe of it is something greater than can be felt from 
the most stupendous natural scenery. For the crea- 
tion of such a system as a high human intelligence, en- 
dowed with its ineffably perfect instruments of eye and 
hand, is a far more appalling manifestation of Infinite 
Power, than the making either of seas or mountains. — 
Tne Two Paths, p. 145. 

The object of the great Resemblant Arts is, and al- 
ways has been, to resemble; and to resemble as closely 
as possible. It is the function of a good portrait to 
set the man before you in habit as he lived, and I would 
we had a few more that did so. It is the function of a 
good landscape to set the scene before you in its real- 
ity ; to make you, if it may be, think the clouds are 
flying, and the streams foaming. It is the function of 
the best sculptor — the true Daedalus — to make stillness 
look like l)re;ithi:ig, and marble look like flesh. . . - 

You think all that very MTong. So did I. once; but 
it was I that was wrong. A long time ago, before ever 
J had seen Oxford, I painted a picture of the Lake of 



CARDIXAL TEXETS OF Airr. 5-5 

Como, for my father. It was not at all like the Lake 
of Como; but I thought it rather the better for that. 
My father differed with me ; and objected particularly 
to a boat with a red and yellow awning, which I had 
put into the most conspicuous corner of my drawino-. 
I declared this boat to be "necessary to the composi- 
tion." My father not the less objected, that he had 
never seen such a boat, either at Como or elsewhere; 
and suggested that if I would make the lake look a lit- 
tle more like water, I should be under no necessity of 
explaining its nature by the presence of floating objects. 
I thought him at the time a very simple person for his 
pains; but have since learned, and it is the very gist 
of all practical matters, which, as professor of line art, 
I have now to toll you, that the great point in painting 
a lake is — to get it to look like water. — Anitiut I\nU- 
llci, pp. TO, SO. 

The utmost power of art can only be given in a ma- 
terial capable of receiving and retaining the influence 
of the subtlest touch of the human hand. That hand is 
the most perfect agent of material power existing in 
the universe ; and its full subtlety can only be shown 
when the material it works on, or with, is entirely 
yielding. The chords of a perfect instrument will re- 
ceive it, but not of an imperfect one; the softly bend- 
ing point of the hair pencil, and soft melting of color, 
will receive it, but not even the chalk or pen point, still 
less the steel point, chisel, or marble. — The Tii^o Ait/is 
p. 1 l:J. 

Our best finishing is but coarse and blundering work 
after all. We may smooth, and soften, and sharpen 
till we are sick at heart; but take a good magnifying 
glass to our miracle of skill, and the invisible edge is a 
jagged saw, and the silky thread a rugged cable, and 
the soft surface a granite desert. Let all the ingenuity 
and all the art of the human race ba brought to bear 
upon the attainment of the utmost possible finish, and 
they could not do what is done in the foot of a fly, or 
the film of a bubble. God alone can finish. — Modem 
Painters, IIL, p. i:}-?. 

Accurately speaking, no good work whatever can be 
perfect. ... I believe there has only been one man 



f4 A n USKIX A yJTHOL G Y. 

who would not acknowledge this necessity, and strove 
ill ways to reach perfection, Leonardo; the end of his 
^'ain effort being merely that he would take ten years 
to a picture, and leave it unfinished. And therefore, if 
we are to have great men working at al), or less men 
doing their best, the work will be imperfect, however 
beautiful. Of human work none but what is bad can 
be perfect, in its own bad way.* — Stones of J^enice, 
IJ., p. 131. 

If it were possible for art to give all the truths of 
nature, it ought to do it. But this is not possible. 
Choice must always be made of some facts which can 
be represented, from among others which must be 
passed by in silence, or even, in some respects, mis- 
represented. The inferior artist chooses unimportant 
and scattered tri'ths; the great artist chooses the most 
necessary first, and afterwards the most consistent with 
these, so as to obtain the greatest possible and most 
harmonious st/m. F^r instance, Rembrandt always 
chooses to represent the exact force with which the 
light on the most illumined part of an object is opposed 
to its obscurer portions. In order to obtain this, i:) 
most cases, not very important truth, he sacrifices the 
light and color of five-sixths of *iis picture; and the ex- 
pression of every character of objects which depends 
on tenderness of shape or tint. Hut he obtains his 
single truth, and what picturesque and forcible expres- 
sion is dependent upon it, with magnu*ieent skill and 
subtlety. Veronese, on the contrary, chooses to repre- 
sent the great relations of visible things to each other, 
to the heaven above, and to the earth bene-ath them. 
He holds it more important to show how a figuro 
stands relieved from delicate air, or marble wall ; bcw 
as a red, or purple, or a white figure, it separates it' 
self, in clear discernibility, from things not red, nor 
purple, nor white; how infinite daylight shines round 
it; iiow innumerable veils of faint shadow invest it; 
how its blackness and darkness are, in the excess of 
their nature, just as limited and local as its intensity of 

••The Elgin marbles are supposed by many persons to be " per- 
fect." In the most important portions they indeed appri lach perfec- 
tion, but only there. The draperies are unfinished, the hair and 
wool of the animals are unfinished, and the.entira bas-reliefs of thu 
frieze are roughly cut. 



CARDINAL TENETS OF ART. 55 

light : all this, I say, he feels to be more important 
than showing merely the exact measure of the spark of 
sunshine that gleams on a dagger- hilt, or glows on a 
jewel. All this, moreover, he feels to be harmonious, 
— capable of being joined in one great system of spa- 
cious truth. And with inevitable watchfulness, inesti- 
mable subtlety, he unites all this in tenderest balance, 
noting in each hair's-breadth of color, not merely what 
its Tightness or wrongness is in itself, but what its rela- 
tion is to every other on his canvas. — Modern Paint- 
ers, III., p. 52. 

The Whole Matter of Finish summed up. — I do 
not wonder at people sometimes thinking I contradict 
myself when they come suddenly on any of the scat- 
tered passages, in which I am forced to insist on the 
opposite practical applications of subtle principles of 
this kind. It may amuse the reader, and be finally serv- 
iceable to him in showing him how necessary it is to 
the right handling of any subject, that these contrary 
statements should be made, if I assemble here the prin- 
cipal ones I remember having brought forward, bearing 
on (his difficult point of precision in execution. 

Finish, for the sake of added truth, or utility, or 
beauty, is noble; but finish for the sake of workman- 
'ship, neatness, or polish, ignoble. . . . 

No good work whatever can be perfect, and the de- 
mand for perfection is always a sign of the misunder- 
standing of the end of art. "' The first cause of the 
fall of the arts in Europe was a relentless requirement 
of perfection." . . . 

Perfect finish (finish, that is to say, up to the point 
possible) is always desirable from the greatest masters, 
and is always given by them. . . . 

Now all these passages are perfectly true ; and, as in 
much more serious matters, the essential thing for the 
reader is to receive their truth, however little he may 
be able to see their consistency. If truths of apparent 
contrary character are candidly and rightly received, 
they will fit themselves together in the mind without 
any troul)le. But no truth maliciously received will 
nourish you, or fit with others. The clue of connec- 
tion may in this case, however, be given in a word. 
Absolute finish is always right ; finish, inconsistent 



5G .4. RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

with prudence and "j^assion, wrong. The imperative 
demand for finish is ruinous, because it refuses better 
things than finish. The stopping short of the finish, 
which is honorably possible to human energy, is de- 
structive on the other side and not in less degree. Err, 
of the two, on the side of completion. — Modern Paint- 
ers, v., pp. 294-297. 

Decoration and Conventionalism in Art. — There 
is no existing highest-order art but is decorative. The 
best sculpture yet produced has been the decoration of 
a temple front — the best painting, the decoration of a 
room. Raphael's best doing is merely the wall-coloring 
of a suite of apartments in the Vatican, and his car- 
toons were made for tapestries. Correggio's best doing 
is the decoration of two small church cupolas at Parma ; 
Michael Angelo's, of a ceiling in the Pope's private 
chapel ; Tintoret's, of a ceiling and side wall belonging 
to a charitable society at Venice ; while Titian and 
Veronese threw out their noblest thoughts, not even on 
the inside, but on the outside of the common brick and 
plaster walls of Venice. 

You will every day hear it absurdly said that room 
decoration should be by flat patterns — by dead colors — 
by conventional monotonies, and I know not what. 
Now, just bo assured of this — nobody ever yet used 
conventional art to decorate with, when he could do 
anything better, and knew that what he did would 
be safe. Nay, a great painter will always give you the 
natural art, safe or not. Correggio gets a commission 
to paint a room on the ground floor of a palace at 
Parma : any of our people — bred on our fine modern 
principles — would have covered it with a diaper, or with 
stripes or flourishes, or mosaic patterns. Not so Cor- 
reggio: he paints a thick trellis of vine-leaves, with 
oval openings, and lovely children leaping through them 
into the room ; and lovely children, depend upon it, 
are rather more desirable decorations than diaper, if 
you can do them — but they are not quite so easily 
done. . . . 

But if art is to be placed v/here it is liable to injury — 
to wear and tear; or to alteration of its form ; as, for 
instance, on domestic utensils, and armor, and weapons, 
and dress ; in which either the oi-nastnent will be worn 



CARDINAL TENETS OF ART. 57 

out by the usage of the thing, or will be c:i8i isiLo al- 
tered shape by the play of its folds; then it is wrong to 
put beautiful and j)erfeet art to such uses, and you v/ant 
forms of inferior art, such as will be by their simplicity 
less liable to injury ; or, by reason of their complexity 
and continuousness, may show to advantage, however 
distorted by the folds they are cast into. . . . 

The less of nature it contains, the more degraded is 
the ornament, and the fitter for a human place; but, how- 
ever far a great workman may go in r.-^f using the higher 
organisms of nature, he always takes care to retain the 
magnificence of natural lines; that is to say, of the in- 
finite curves, such as I have analyzed in the fourth 
volume of " Modern Painters." His copyists, fancying 
that they can follow him without nature, miss precisely 
the essence of all the work ; so that even the simplest 
piece of Greek conventional ornament loses the whole 
of its value in any modern imitation of it, the finer 
curves being always missed. . . . 

The animal and bird drawing of the Egyptians is, in 
their fine age, quite magnificent under its conditions ; 
magnificent in two ways — first, in keenest perception 
of the main forms and facts ia the creature ; and, sec- 
ondly, in the grandeur of line by which their forms 
are abstracted and insisted on, making every asp, ibis, 
and vulture a sublime spectre of asp or ibis or vulture 
power. The way for students to get some of this gift 
again [some only, for I believe the fullness of the gift 
itself to be connected with vital superstition, and with 
resulting intensity of reverence ; people were likely to 
know something about hawks and ibises, when to kill one 
was to be irrevocably judged to death) is never to pass a 
day without drawing some animal from the life, allow- 
ing themselves the fewest possible lines and colors to do 
it with, but resolving that whatever is characteristic of 
the animal shall in some way or other be shown. — T/ie 
Tiro Paths, pp. 55-59. 

If the designer of furniture, of cups and vases, of 
dress patterns, and the like, exercises himself contin- 
ually in the imitation of natural form in some leading 
division of his work ; then, holding by this stem of life, 
he ma}' pass down mto all kinds of merely geometi'ical 



58 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

or formal design with perfect safety, and with noble 
results. — l^ie Two J^/t/u^, p. US. 

The first thing we have to ask of the decoration is 
that it should indicate strong liking, and that honestly. 
It matters not so much what the thing is, as that the 
builder should really love it and enjoy it, and say so 
plainly. The architect of Bourges Cathedral liked 
hawthorns ; so he has covered his porch with hawthorn — 
it is a perfect Niobe of May. Never was such haw- 
thorn ; you would try to gather it forthwith, but for 
fear of being pricked. The old Lombard architects 
liked hunting ; so they covered their work with horses 
and hounds, and men blowing trumpets two yards 
long. — /Stones of '\'^iii!r<\ I., p. 5(). 

You will often hear modern architects defending 
their monstrous ornamentation on the ground that it is 
"conventional," and that architectural ornament ought 
to be conventionalized. Remember when you hear this, 
that noble conventionalism is not an agreement between 
the artist and spectator that the one shall misrepre- 
sent nature sixty times over, and the other believe the 
misrepresentation sixty times over, but it is an agree- 
ment that certain means and liinitations being pre- 
scribed, only that K'ind of truth is to be expected 
which is consistent with those means. For instance, if 
Sir Joshua Reynolds had been talking to a friend 
about the character of a face, and there had been 
nothing in the room but a deal table and an ink bottle — 
and no pens — Sir Joshua would have dipped his finger 
in the ink, and painted a portrait on the table with his 
finger — and a noble portrait too, certainly not delicate 
in outline, nor representing any of the qualities of the 
face dependent on rich outline, but getting as much of 
the face as in that manner was attainable. That is noble 
conventionalism, and Egyptian work on granite, or il- 
luminator's work in glass, is all conventional in the 
same sense, but not conventionally false. — Leetureson 
Architertnrc, p. 80. 

Old Pieces of Gold or Silver Plate. — The way 
to have a truly noble service of plate, is to keep adding 
to it, not melting it. At every marriage, and at every 
birth, get a new piece of gold or silver if you will, but 



CARDINAL TEN^ETS OF ART. m 

with noble workman.ship on it, done for hH time, and 
put it among your treasures; that is one of the chief 
things which gold was made for and made incorruptible 
for. . . . Gold has been given us, among other things, 
that we might put beautiful work into its imperishable 
splendor, and that the artists who have the most wilful 
fancies may have a material which will drag out, and 
beat out, as their dreams require, and will hold itself 
together with fantastic tenacity, whatever rare and 
delicate service they set it upon. — A Joy For Ever, 
p. 34. 

Venetian Glass. — Our modern glass is exquisitely 
clear in its substance, true in its form, accurate in its 
cutting. We are proud of this. We ought to be 
ashamed of it. The old Venice glass was muddy, inac- 
curate in all its forms, and clumsily cut, if at all. And 
the old Venetian was justly proud of it. For there is 
this difference between the English and Venetian work- 
man, that the former thinks only of accurately match- 
ing his patterns, and getting his curves perfectly true 
and his edges perfectly sharp, and becomes a mere 
machine for rounding curves and sharpening edges, 
while the old Venetian cared not a whit whether his 
edges were sharp or not, but lie invented a new design 
for every glass that he made, and never moulded a 
handle or a lip without a new fancy in it. And there- 
fore, though some Venetian glass is ugly and clumsy 
enough, when made by clumsy and uninventive work- 
men, other Venetian glass is so lovely in its forms that 
no price is too great for it ; and we never see the same 
form in it twice. — Stones of Venice, II., p. 108. 

Cut, Spun, and Moulded Glass. — All cut glass is 
barbarous : for the cutting conceals its ductility, and 
confuses it with crystal. Also, all very neat, finished, 
and perfect form in glass is barbarous : for this fails in 
proclaiming another of its great virtues ; namely, the 
ease with which its light substance can be moulded or 
blown into any form, so long as perfect accuracy be 
not required. In metal, which, even when heated 
enough to be thoroughly malleable, retains yet such 
weight and consistency as render it susceptible of the 
finest handling and retention of the most delicate form. 



00 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

gi'oiit precision of workmanship is admissible; but in 
glass, which when once softened must be blown or 
moulded, not hammered, and which is liable to lose, 
by contraction or subsidence, the fineness of the forms 
given to it, no delicate outlines are to be attempted, 
but only such fantastic and fickle grace as the mind of 
the workman can conceive and execute on the instant. 
The more wild, extravagant, and grotesque in their 
gracefulness the forms are, the better. No material is 
so adapted for giving full play to the imagination, but 
it must not be wrought with refinement or painfulness, 
still less with costliness. For as in gratitude we are 
to proclaim its virtues, so in all honesty we are to con- 
fess its imperfecdons; and while we triumphantly set 
forth its transparency, we are also frankly to admit its 
fragility, and therefore not to waste much time upon 
it, nor put any real art into it when intended for daily 
use. No workman ought ever to spend more than an 
hour in the making of any glass vessel. — /Stones of 
J^e/iice, II., p. o!)4. 



GREAT ART AND GREAT MEN. 

Great Art- Work. — In the greatest work there is 
no manner visible. It is at first uninteresting from its 
quietness ; the majesty of restrained power only dawns 
gradually upon us, as we walk towards its horizon. — 
Athena, p. I1'2. 

It is the crowning virtue of all great art that, how- 
ever little is left of it by the injuries of time, that lit- 
tle will be lovely. As long as you can see anything, 
you can see — almost all ; — so much the hand of the 
master will suggest of his soul. — Mornings in Flor- 
ctn^e, p. 16. 

The difference between great and mean art lies, not 
in definable methods of handling, or styles of represen- 
tation, or choices of subjects, but wlioUy in the noble- 
ness of the end to which the effort of the painter is ad- 
dressed. We cannot say that a painter is great be- 
cause lie paints boldly, or paints delicately ; because he 
generalizes or particularizes ; because he loves detail, 



CARDINAL TENETS OF ART. Gl 

or because he disdains it. He is great if, by any of 
these means, he has hiid open noble truths, or aroused 
noble emotions. — Jloder/i Painters, III., p. 39. 

Distinctness in Drawing. — The best drawing in- 
volves a wonderful perception and expression of indis- 
tinctness; and yet all noble drawing is separated from 
the ignoble by its distinctness, by its fine expression 
and firm assertion of /Somethin.(y ; whereas the bad 
drawing, without either firmness or fineness, expresses 
and asserts NiAluiuj. The first thing, therefore, to 
be looked for as a sign of noble art, is a clear con- 
sciousness of what is drawn and what is not; the bold 
statement, and frank confession — " This I know," 
'■'tJi((t I know not;" and, generally speaking, all haste, 
slurring, obscurity, indecision, are signs of low art, and 
all calmness, distinctness, luminousness, and positive- 
ness, of high art. — Modern Painters, III., p. 54. 

Gkeat Art Provincial. — All great art, in the 
great times of art, is procinria/, showing its energy in 
the capital, but educated, and chiefly productive, in its 
own country town. The best works of Correggio are 
at Parma, but he lived in his patronymic village; the 
best works of Cagliari at Venice, but he learned to 
paint at Verona ; the best works of Angelico are at 
Rome, but he lived at Fesole: the best works of Luini 
at Milan, but he lived at _jino. And, with still greater 
necessity of moral law, the cities which exercise form- 
ing power on style, are themselves provincial. There 
is no Attic style, but there is a Doric and Corinthian 
one. There is no Roman style, but there is an Umbri- 
an, Tuscan, Lombard, and Venetian one. There is no 
Parisian style, but there is a Norman and Burgundian 
one. There is no London or Edinburgh style, but there 
is a Kentish and Northumbrian one. 

The capitals of Europe are all of monstrous and de- 
graded architecture. An artist in former ages might 
be corrupted by the manners, but he was exalted by the 
splendor, of the capital ; and perished amidst magnifi- 
cence of palaces : but now— the Board of Works is 
capable of no higher skill than drainage, and the British 
artist floats placidly down the maximum current of the 
National Cloaca, to his Dunciad rest, content, virtually, 



63 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

that his life should be spent at one end of a cigar, and 
his fame expire at the other. — Art of Enqland, pp. 
109,110. 

The Great Masters. — I am certain that in the 
most perfect human artists, reason does not supersede 
instinct, but is added to an instinct as much more divine 
than that of the lower animals as the human body is 
more beautiful than theirs ; that a great singer sings 
not with less instinct than the nightingale, but with 
more — only more various, applical)le, and governable; 
that a great architect does not build with less instinct 
than the beaver or the bee, but with more — with an 
innate cunning of proportion that embraces all beauty, 
and a divine ingenuity of skill that improvises all 
construction. — The 3Ji/stery of I^ife,\>. 111*. 

The sight of a great painter is as authoritative as the 
lens of a camera lucida; he })erceives the form which a 
photograph will ratify ; he is sensitive to the violet or 
to the golden ray to the last precision and gradation of 
the chemist's defining light and intervaled line. — Art 
of Englwid, p. 103. 

No great inteUcvtual tlthuj was ccer done hy 
great effort ; a great thing can only be done by a 
great man, and he does it uutJiout effort. — Pre- 
JlapJtaeHtisin, p. 1>. 

The great men whose lives you would think, by the 
results of their work, had been passed in strong emo- 
tion, have in reality subdued themselves, though capable 
of the very strongest passions, into a calm as absolute 
as that of a deeply sheltered mountain lake, which re- 
flects every agitation of the clouds in the sky, and every 
change of the shadows on the hills, but is itself motion- 
less. — Lectures on Art., p. 53. 

The inferior mind intently watches its own processes, 
and dearly values its own produce; the master-mind is 
intent on other things than itself, and cares little for the 
fruits of a toil which it is apt to undertake rather as a 
law of life than a means of immortality. It will sing at 
a feast, or retouch an old play, or paint a dark wall, for 
its daily bread, anxious only to be honest in its fulfil- 
nient of its pledges or its duty, and careless that future 



CARDINAL TENETS OF ART. 63 

ages will rank it among the gods. — Giotto and his 
Works, p. 12. 

It is a characteristic — (as far as I know, quite a uni- 
versal one) — of the greatest masters, that they never 
expect you to look at them ; — seem always rather sur- 
prised if you want to; and not overpleased. Tell them 
you are going to hang their picture at the upper end of 
the table at the next great City dinner, and that Mr. 
So and So will make a speech about it ; you produce 
no impression upon them, whatever, or an unfavorable 
one. The chances are ten to one they send you the 
most rubbishy thing they can find in their lumber- 
room. But send for one of them in a hurry, and tell 
him the rats have gnawed a nasty hole behind the par- 
lor door, and you want it plastered and painted over ; 
— and he doa'5 you a masterpiece which the world will 
peep behind your door to look at forever. — Mornings 
in Florence, p. 42. 

All great men. not only know their business, but 
usually know that they know it; and are not only 
right in their main opinions, but they usually know 
that they are right in them; only, they do not think 
much of themselves on that account. Arnolfo knows 
he can build a good dome at Florence ; Albert Diirer 
writes calmly to one who had found fault with his work, 
" It cannot be better done ; " Sir Isaac Newton knows 
that he has worked out a problem or two that would 
have puzzled anybody else; — only they do not expect 
their fellow-men therefore to fall down and worship 
them; they have a curious luider-sense of powerless- 
ncss, feeling that the greatness was not in them, but 
throuf/Ji them ; that they could not do or be anything 
else than God made them. — 3Iodern Painters, III., 
p. 284. 

Scott writing his chapter or two before breakfast — 
not retouching, Turner finishing a whole drawing in a 
forenoon before he goes out to shoot (providing always 
the chapter and drawing be good), are instantly to be 
set above men who confessedly have spent the day over 
the work, and think the hours well spent if it has been 
a little mended between sunrise and simset. Indeed, 
it is no use for men to think to appear great by 



64 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

working fast, dashing, and scrawling; the thing they 
do must be good and great, cost what time it may ; 
but if it be so, and they have honestly and unaffectedly 
done it with no effort, it is probably a greater and bet- 
ter thing than the result of the hardest efforts of others. 
— Modern Painters, III., p. 280. 

The largest soul of any country is altogether its own. 
Not the citizen of the world, but of his own city — 
nay, for the best men, you may say, of his own village. 
Patriot always, provincial always, of his own crag or 
field always. A Liddesdale man, or a Tyned;de; 
Angelico from the rock of Fesole, or Virgil from the 
Mantuan marsh. You dream of National unity ! — 
you might as well strive to melt the stars down into one 
nugget, and stamp them small into coin with one 
Caesar's face. — Art of JEiKjUuid, j). 30. 

The Foreseeing and Foreordaining Power of 
THE Great Artist. — In Turner, Tintoret, and Paul 
Veronese, the intenseness of perception, first, as to 
what is to be done, and then, of the means of doing it, 
is so colossal, that I always feel in the presence of 
their pictures just as other peo})le would in that of a 
supernatural being. Common talkers use the word 
"magic" of a great painter's power without knowing 
what they mean by it. They mean a great truth. 
That power is- magical; so magical, that, well under- 
stood, no enchanter's work could be more miraculous 
or more appalliiKj. — Modern Painters, IV., p. 78. 

The Universality and Realism of the Great 
Artists. — Among the various ready tests of true 
greatness there is not any more certain than this dar- 
ing reference to, or use of, mean and little things — 
mean and little, that is, to mean and little minds; but, 
when used by the great men, evidently part of the no- 
ble whole which is authoritatively present before them. 
— Modern Painters, III., p. 100. 

There is, indeed, perhaps, no greater sign of innate 
and real vulgarity of mind or defective education than 
the want of power to understand the universality of 
the ideal truth ; the absence of sympathy with the 
colossal grasp of those intellects, which have in them 
so much of divine, that nothing is small to them, and 



CARDINAL TENETS OF ART. 65 

nothing large; but vvitli equal and unoffended vision 
they take in the sum of tlie world — Straw Street and 
the seventh heavens — in the same instant. — Modern 
Pdinters, III., p. 102. 

It is a constant law that the greatest men, whether 
poets or historians, live entirely in their own age, and that 
the greatest fruits of their work are gathered out of their 
own age. Dante paints Italy in the thirteenth cen- 
tury ; Chaucer, England in the fourteenth ; Masaccio, 
Florence in the fifteenth ; Tintoret, Venice in the six- 
teenth ; — all of them utterly regardless of anachronism 
and minor error of every kind, but getting always vital 
truth out of the vital present. 

If it be said that Shakespeare wrote perfect historical 
plays on siibjects belonging to the preceding centuries, 
I answer, that they are perfect plays just because there 
is no care about centuries in them, but a life which all 
men recognize for the human life of all time. — Modern 
Painters, III., p. 110. 

All great art represents something that it sees or 
believes in ; nothing unseen or uncredited. . . . 

For instance, Dante's centaur, Chiron, dividing his 
beard with his arrow before he can speak, is a thing 
that no mortal would ever have thought of, if he had 
not actually seen the centaur do it. They might have 
coujposed handsome bodies of men and horses in all 
possible ways, through a whole life oi pseudo-idealism, 
and yet never dreamed of any such thing. But the 
real living centaur actually trotted across Dante's 
brain, and he saw him do it. — Modern Painters, III., 
p. 100. 

If the next painter who desires to illustrate the char- 
acter of Homer's Achilles, would represent him cutting 
pork chops for Ulysses, he would enable the public to 
understand the Homeric ideal better than they have 
done for several oonturies. — Modern Painters, III., 
p. 98. 

Beauty deprived of its proper foils and adjuncts 
ceases to be enjoyed as beauty, just as light deprived 
of all shadow ceases to be enjoyed as light. A white 
can vns cannot produce an effect of sunshine ; the painter 



66 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

must darken it in some places before lie can make 
it look luminous in others ; nor can an uninterrupted 
succession of beauty produce the true effect of beauty ; 
it must be foiled by inferiority before its own power 
can be developed. Nature has for the most part min- 
gled her inferior and nobler elements as she mingles 
sunshine with shade, giving due use and influence to 
both, and the painter who chooses to remove the 
shadow, perishes in the burning desert he has created. 
The truly high and beautiful art of Angelico is con- 
tinually refreshed and strengthened by his frank por- 
traiture of the most ordinary features of his brother 
monks, and of the recorded peculiarities of imgainly 
sanctity; but the modern German and Raphaelesque 
schools lose all honor and nobleness in barber-like ad- 
miration of handsome faces, and have, in fact, no real 
faith except in straight noses and curled hair. — Mod- 
ern Painters, III., p. 50. 

As far as I have watched the main powers of human 
mind, they have risen first from the resolution to see 
fearlessly, pitifully, and to its very worst, what these 
deep colors mean, wheresoever they fall ; not by any 
means to pass on the other side looking pleasantly up 
to the sky, but to stoop to the horror, and let the sky, 
for the present, take care of its own clouds. However 
this may be in mortal matters, with which I have 
nothing here to do, in my own field of inquiry the fact 
is so; and all great and beautiful work has come of first 
gazing without shrinking into the darkness. If, having 
done so, the human spirit can, by its courage and faith, 
conquer the evil, it rises into conceptions of victori- 
ous and consummated beauty. It is then the spirit of 
the highest Greek and Venetian Art. If unable to 
conquer the evil, but remaining in strong, though mel- 
ancholy war with it, not rising into sui)i'eme beauty, it 
is the spirit of the best northern art, typically represent- 
ed by that of Holbein andDiirer. If, itself conquered by 
the evil, infected by the dragon breath of it, and at 
last brought into captivity, so as to take delight in evil 
forever, it becomes the spirit of the dark, but still pow- 
erful sensualistic art, represented typically by that of 
Salvator. — Modern Pointers, V., pp. 225-229. 



CABDINAL TENETS OF ART. 67 

THE IMAGINATION IN ART. 

DisTixcTiox Betweex Fancy and Imaoixation, — ■ 
I am myself now entirely indifferent which word I use; 
and should say of a work of art that it was well " fan- 
cied," or well "invented," or well "imagined," with 
only some shades of different meaning in the applica- 
tion of the terms, rather dependent on the matter 
treated, than the power of mind involved in the treat- 
ment. I might agree with Sir Piei'cie Shafton that 
his doublet was well-fancied, or that his figure of speech 
was well conceived, and might perhaps reserve the 
word " Imagined " for the design of an angel's dress by 
Giotto, or the choice ('f a simile by Dante. But such 
distinctions fire scarcely more than varieties of cour- 
tesy or dignitv in the use of words. — Modern Paint- 
ers, II., p. 155, Ed. 1888. 

Art is Fouxded ix Truth, axd Coxsists ix Im- 
agination. — Having learned to represent actual ap- 
peai'ances faithfully, if you have any human faculty of 
your own, visionary appearances will take ])lace to you 
which will be nobler and more true than any actual or 
material appearances; and the realization of these is 
the function of every fine art, which is founded abso- 
lutely, therefore, in truth, and consists absolutely in 
imagination. — Eagle's Nest, p. 91. 

Design. — If you paint a bottle only to amuse the 
spectator by showing him how like a painting may be 
to a bottle, you cannot be considered, in art-philosophy, 
as a designer. But if you paint the cork flying out of 
the bottle, and the contents arriving in an arch at the 
mouth of a recipient glass, you are so far forth a de- 
signer or signer ; probably meaning to express certain 
ultimate facts respecting, say, the hospitable disposi- 
tion of the landlord of the house; but at all events 
representing the bottle and glass in a designed, and 
not merely natural manner. Not merely natural — nay, 
m some sense non-natural or supernatural. And all 
great artists show both this fantastic condition of mind 
in their work, and show thfit it has arisen out of a com- 
municative or didactic purpose. They are the Sign- 
painters of God. — Ariadne, p. 82. 



68 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

The Art-Seek AS ax Interpreter of Nature to rs. 
— Although, to the sintill, conceited, jmrI affected pninter 
disphiying his narrow knowledge and tiny dexterities, 
our only word may be, " Stand aside from between 
that nature juid me," yet to the great imaginative 
painter — greater a million times in every faculty of 
soul than we-^our word may wisely be, "Come between 
this nature and me — this nature which is too great and 
too wonderful for me ; temper it for me, interpret it 
to me ; let me see with yc-ur eyes, and hear with your 
ears, and have help and strength from your great 
spirit." — JModeru Painters, III., p. 1(51. 

The Working of the Minds of Great Men. — 
Imagine all that any of these men had seen or heard in 
the whole course of their lives, laid up accurately in 
their memories as in vast storehouses, extending, with 
the poets, even to the slightest intonations of syllables 
heard in the beginning of their lives, and, with the 
painters, down to the minute folds of drapery, and 
shapes of leaves or stones ; and over all this unindexed 
and immeasurable mass of treasure, the imagination 
brooding and wandering, but dream-gifted, so as to 
summon at any moment exactly such gi'oups of ideas 
as shall justly fit each other : this I conct ive to be the 
real natui'cof the imaginative mind, and this, I believe, 
it would be oftener explained to us as being, by the 
men themselves who possess it, but that they have no 
idea what ihe state of other persons' minds is in com- 
parison ; they suppose every one remembers all that he 
has seen in the same way, and do not understand how 
it happens that thoy alone can produce good drawings 
or great thoughts. — Modern Pdinters, IV., p. 40. 

Association of Ideas. — Examine the nature of 
your own emotion (if you feel it) at the sight of the 
Alp, and you find all the brightness of that emotion 
hanging, like dew on gossam.er, on a curious web of 
subtle fancy and imperfect knowledge. First, you have 
a vague idea of its size, coupled with wonder at the 
work of the great Builder of its walls and foundations, 
then an apprehension of its eternity, apathetic sense of 
its perpetualness, and your own transientness, as of the 
grass upon its sides ; then, and in this very sadness, a 



CARDINAL TENETS OF ART. 69 

sense of strange companionship with past generations 
in seeing what they saw. 

Then, mingled with these more solemn imaginations, 
come the understandings of the gifts and glories of the 
Alps, the fancying forth of all the fountains that well 
from its rocky walls, and strong rivers that are born 
out of its ice, and of all the pleasant valleys that wind 
between its cliffs, and all the chalets that gleam among 
its clouds, and happy farmsteads couched upon its 
pastures ; while togetlier with the thoughts of these, 
rise strange sympathies with all the unknown of human 
life, and happiness, and death, signified by that narrow 
white fiame of the everlasting snow, seen so far in the 
morning sky. — Jlodent Painters, III., p. 152. 

" Excellent Good I'faith." — Tell any man, of the 
slightest imaginative power, that such and such a pic- 
ture is good, and moans this or rhat : tell him, for in- 
stance, that a Claude is good, and that it means trees, 
and grass, and water; and forthwith, whatever faith, 
virtue, humility, and imagination there are in the man, 
rise up to help Claude, and to declare that indeed it is 
all "excellent good, i'faith f and whatever in the 
course of his life he has felt of pleasure in trees and 
grass, he will begin to reflect upon and enjoy anew, 
supposing all the while it is the picture he is enjoying. 
— Modem Painters, III., pp. 153, 154. 

The Spirit of Buffoonery. — I suppose the chief 
bar to the action of imagination, and stop to all great- 
ness in this present age of ours, is its mean and shallow 
love of jest; so that if there be in any good and lofty 
work a flaw, failing, or undipped vulnerable part, where 
sarcasm may stick or stay, it is caught at, and pointed 
at, and buzzed about, and fixed upon, and stuiig into, as 
a recent wound is by flies ; and nothing is ever taken 
seriously or as it was meant, but always, if it may be, 
turned the wrong way, and misundei'stood ; and while 
this is so, there is not, nor cannot be, any hope of 
achievement of high things; men dare not open their 
hearts to us, if we are to broil them on a thorn-fire. — 
Modern Painters, II., p. 188, Ed. 1883. 



70 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 



SECTION II.— THE GRAPHIC ARTS. 
Chapter I. — Painting. 



No vain or selfish person can possibly paint, in the 
noble sense of the word. Vanity and selfishness are 
troublous, eager, anxious, petulant : — painting can only 
be done in calm of mind. — Modern Painters, V., 
p. 211. 

The sky is not blue color merely ; it is l)lue fire — 
and cannot be painted. — Modern Pa utters, IV., p. 47. 

Oil-Painting. — You have often heard quoted the 
saying of Michael Angelo, that oil-painting was only 
fit for women and children. 

He said so, simply because he had neither the skill to 
lay a single touch of good oil-painting, nor the patience 
to overcome even its elementary difficulties. 

Oil-painting is the Art of arts ; it is sculpture, draw- 
ing, and music, all in one, involving the technical dex- 
terities of those threvi several arts ; that is to say — the 
decision and strength of the stroke of the chisel ; — the 
balanced distribution of appliance of that force necessary 
for gradation in light and shade ; — -and the passionate 
felicity of rightly multiplied actions, all unerring, 
which on an instrument produce right sound, and on 
canvas, living color. There is no other human skill 
so great or so wonderful as the skill of fine oil-painting ; 
and there is no other art whose results are so absolutely 
permanent. Music is gone as soon as produced — 
marble discolors — fresco fades — glass darkens or de- 
composes — painting alone, well guarded, is practically 
everlasting. — Relation between Micltael Aiujelo and 
Tintoret, p. 18. 

A Beautiful Thing the Work of Ages. — The 
glory of a great picture is in its shame; and the charm 



THE GRAPHIC ARTS.— PAINTING. 71 

of it, in speaking the pleasure of a great heart, that 
there is something better than picture. Also it speaks 
with the voices of many: the efforts of thousands dead, 
and their passions, are in the pictures of their children 
to-day. Not with the skill of an hour, nor of a life, 
nor of a century, but with the help of numberless souls, 
a beautiful thing must be done. — Laws of Fesole, 
p. 13. 

The Best Pictures are Portraits. — The best 
pictures that exist of the great schools are all portraits, 
or groups of portraits, often of veiy simple and nowise 
noble persons. You may have much more brilliant 
and impressive qualities in imaginative pictures ; you 
may have figures scattered like clouds, or garlanded like 
flowers ; you may have light and shade, as of a tempest, 
and color, as of the rainbow ; but all that is child's 
play to the great men, though it is astonishment to us. 
Their real strength is tried to the utmost, and as far as 
I know it is never elsewhere brought out so thoroughly, 
as in painting one man or woman, and the soul thaf 
was in them. — Lectures on Art, p. 68. 

The highest thing that art can do is to set before you 
the true image of the presence of a noble human being. 
It has never done more than this, and it ought not to do 
less. — Lectures on Art, p. 27. 

Invention and Composition. — By a truly great in- 
ventor everything is invented ; no atom of the work is 
unmodified by his mind ; and no study from nature, 
however beautiful, could be introduced by him into his 
design without change ; it would not fit with the rest. 
Finished studies for introduction are therefore chiefly 
by Leonardo and Raphael, both technical designers 
rather than imaginative ones. — Modern Painters, V,, 
p. 202. 

A great composition always has a leading emotional 
purpose, technically called its motive, to which all its 
lines and forms have some relation. Undulating lines, 
for instance, are expressive of action ; and would be false 
in effect if the motive of the picture was one of re- 
pose. Horizontal and angular lines are expressive of 
rest and strength ; and would destroy a design whose 



'i2 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

purpose was to express disquiet and feebleness. — Mod- 
em Pididers, v., p. 184. 

Take any noble musical air, and you find, on exam- 
ining it, that not one even of the faintest or shortest 
notes can be removed without destruction to the whole 
passage in which it occurs ; and that every note in the pas- 
sage is twenty times more beautiful so introduced, than 
it would have been if played singly on the instrument. 
Precisely this degree of arrangement and relation must 
exist between every touch and line in a great picture. 
You ffxay consider the whole as a prolonged musical 
composition : its parts, as separate airs connected in 
the story ; its little bits and fragments of color and 
line, as separate passages or bars in melodies; and down 
to the minutest note of the whole — down to the 
minutest tourJi — if there is one that can be spared — 
that one is doing mischief. — The Ttco Pal/ts, p. 32. 

Raphael and Holeein compared.— Scholastic learn- 
ing destroy^s Raphael, but it graces him and is a part 
of him. It all but destroys Mantegna ; but it graces 
him. And it does not hurt Holbein, just because it 
does not grace him — never is for an instant a part of 
him. It is with Raphael as with some charming young 
girl who has a new and beautifully made dress brought 
to her, which entirely becomes her — so much, that in 
a little while, thinking of nothing else, she becomes it ; 
and is only the decoration of her dress. But with 
Holbein it is as if you brought the same dress to a 
stout fanner's daughter who was going to dine at the 
Hall; and begged her to put it on that she might not 
discredit the company. She puts it on to please you ; 
looks entirely ridiculous in it, but is not spoiled by it — 
remains herself, in spite of it. — Ariadne, pp. 89, 90. 

The Cartoons of Raphael. — The cartoons of 
Raphael. . . were, in the strictest sense of the word, 
"compositions" — cold arrangements of propriety and 
agreeableness, according to academical formulas ; the 
painter never in any case making the slightest effort to 
conceive the thing as it must have happened, but only 
to gather together graceful lines and beautiful faces, in 
such compliance with commonplace ideas of the subject 
as might obtain for the whole an " epic unity," or 



THE GRAPHIC ARTS.— PAINTING. 73 

some such other form of scholastic perfectness. — 
Modern Painters, III., p. 70. 

The "Doggie" in the Sistine Chaprl. — The in- 
tensest form of northern realization can be matched in 
the south, when the southerns choose. There are two 
pieces of animal drawing in the Sistine Chapel un- 
rivalled for literal veracity. The sheep at the well in 
front of Zipporah ; and afterwards, when she is going 
away, leading lief children, her eldest boy, like every 
one else, has taken his chief treasui'e with him, and this 
treasure is his pet dog. It is a little sharp-nosed white 
fox-terrier, full of fire and life ; but not strong enough 
for a long walk. So little Gershom, whose name 
was "the stranger" because his father had been a stranger 
in a strange land — little Gershom carries his white ter- 
rier under his arm, lying on the top of a large bundle to 
make it comfortable. The doggie puts its sharp nose 
and bright eyes out, above his hand, with a little 
roguish gleam sideways in them, which means — if I 
can read rightly a dog's expression — that he has been 
barking at Moses all the morning, and has nearly put 
him out of temper : — and without any doubt, I can 
assert to you that there is not any other such piece of 
animal painting in the w^orld — so brief, intense, vivid, 
and absolutely balanced in truth; as tenderly drawn as 
if it had been a saint, yet as humorously as Landseer's 
Lord Chancellor poodle. — Ariadne, p. 161. 

Florentine Art and Greek Art compared. — 
Florentine art was essentially Christian, ascetic, ex- 
pectant of a better world, and antagonistic, therefore. 
to the Greek temper. So that the Greek element, once 
forced upon it, destroyed it. There was absolute in- 
compatibility between them. — Modern Painters, V., 
p. 235. 

The Christian painters differed from the Greek in two 
main points. They had been taught a faith which put an 
end to restless questioning and discouragement. All 
was at last to be well — and their best genius might be 
peacefully given to imagining the glories of heaven 
and the happiness of its redeemed. But on the other 
hand, though suffering was to cease in heaven, it was 
to be not only endured, but honored upon earth. And 



74 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

from the Crucifixion, down to a beggars lameness, all 
the tortures and maladies of men were to be made, at 
least in part, the subjects of art. — Modern Puinters,Y ., 

p. 238. 

Poetry and Painting allied.— Infinite confusion 
has been introduced into this subject [the "Grand 
Style "] by the careless and illogical custom of opposing 
painting to poetr^^, instead of regarding poetry as con- 
sisting in a noble use, whether of colors or words. 
Painting is properly to be opposed to speaA'i/u/ or 
uiriti/tf/, but not io poefri/. Both painting and speak- 
ing are methods of expression. Poetry is the employ- 
ment of either for the noblest purposes. — Modern 
Painters, III., p. 29. 

Softness of Touch. — You will find in Veronese, in 
Titian, in Tintoret, in Correggio, and in all the great 
painters, properly so-called, a pecuhar melting and mys- 
tery about tlie penciling, sometimes called softness, 
sometimes freedom, sometimes breadth; but in reality 
a most subtle confusion of colors and forms, obtained 
either by the apparently careless stroke of the brush, 
or by careful retouching with tenderest labor; but 
always obtained in one way or another. — 3Iodern 
Painters, IV., p. 74. 

English Painters. — I do not speak of living men ; 
but among those who labor no more, in this England of 
ours, since it first had a school, we have had only five 
real painters: — -Reynolds, Gainsborough, Hogarth, 
Richard Wilson, and Turner. — The Tuoo Paths, p. 137. 

The [rural] designs of J. C. Hook are, perhaps, the 
only works of the kind in existence which deserve to be 
mentioned in connection with the pastorals of Words- 
worth and Tennyson. — Modern Painters, V., p. 282. 

The Hierarchy of Painters. — He who represents 
deep thoughts and sorrows, as, for instance, Hunt, in his 
Claudio and Isabella, and such other works, is of the 
highest rank in his sphere : and he who represents the 
slight malignities and passions of the drawing-room, as, 
for instance, Leslie, of the second rank ; he who repre- 
sents the sports of boys or simplicities of clowns, as 
Webster or Teniers, of the third rank ; and he who rep- 



THE GRAPHIC ARTS.— PAINTING. 75 

resents brutalities and vices (for delight in them, and 
not for rebuke of them), of no rank at all, or rather of 
a negative rank, holding a certain order in the abyss. — 
3Iodern Painters, III., p. 44. 

Murillo, of all true painters uhe narrowest, feeblest, 
and most superficial, [and] for those reasons the most 
popular.— 77;e Tiro Paths, p. 40. 

In such writings and sayings [of the great painters] as 
we possess, we may trace a quite curious gentleness and 
serene courtesy. Rubens' letters are almost ludicrous 
in their unhurried politeness. Reynolds, swiftest of 
painters, was gentlest of companions ; so also Velasquez, 
Titian, and Veronese. — 3Iodern. Painters, V., p. 212. 

There is perhaps no more popular Protestant pic- 
ture than Salvator's " Witch of Endor," of which the 
subject was chosen by the painter simply because, 
under the names of Saul and the Sorceress he could 
paint a captain of banditti, and a Neapolitan hag. — 
Stones of Venice, II., p. 108. 

Giotto. — The Greeks had painted anything anyhow 
— gods black, horses red, lips and cheeks white; and 
when the Etruscan vase expanded into a Cimabue pic- 
ture, or a Tafi mosaic, still — except that the Madonna 
was to have a blue dress, and everything else as much 
gold on it as could be managed — there was very little 
advance in notions of color. Suddenly, Giotto threw 
aside all the glitter, and all the conventionalism ; and 
declared that he saw the sky blue, the tablecloth white, 
and angels, when he dreamed of them, rosy. And he 
simply founded the schools of color in Italy — Venetian 
and all. 

Giotto came from the field, and saw with his simple 
eyes a lowlier worth. And he painted — the Madonna, 
and St. Joseph, and the Christ — yes, by all means if 
you choose to call them so, but essentially — Mamma, 
Papa, and the Baby. And all Italy threw up its cap — 
"Ora ha Giotto ilgrido." — 3Iorniu(js in Florence, pp. 
27-30. 

Giotto, like all the great painters of the period, was 
merely a travelling decorator of walls, at so much a 
day ; having at Florence a hottega, or workshop, for 



76 A nUSKIX ANTHOLOGY. 

the production and sale of small tempera pictures. 
There were no such things as "studios " in those days. 
An artist's "studies" were over by the time he was 
eighteen; after that he was a lavoratore, "laborer," 
a man who knew his business, and produced certain 
works of known value for a known price ; being 
troubled with no philosophical abstractions, shutting him- 
self up in no wise for the reception of inspirations ; re- 
ceiving, indeed, a good many, as a matter of course — 
just as he received the sunbeams which came in at his 
window, the light which he worked by; — in either case, 
without mouthing about it, or much concerning himself 
as to the nature of it. Not troubled by critics either ; 
satisfied that his work was well done, and that people 
would find it out to be well done ; but not vain of 
it, nor m.ore profoundly vexed at its being found 
fault with, than a good saddler would be by some one's 
saying his last saddle was uneasy in the seat. Not, on 
the whole, much molested by critics, but generally 
understood by the men of sense, bis neighbors and 
friends, and permitted to have his own way with the 
walls he had to paint, as being, on the whole, an au- 
thority about walls ; receiving at the same time a good 
deal of daily encouragement and comfort in the simple 
admiration cf .the populace, and in the general sense of 
having done good, and painted what no man could look 
upon without being the better for it. — Giotto and his 
Works, p. 22. 

The "O" of Giotto. — I have not the slightest 
doubt that Giotto drew the circle as a painter naturally 
would draw it ; that is to say, that he set the vellum 
upright on the wall or panel before him, and then 
steadying his arm firmly against his side, drew the cir- 
cular line with one sweeping but firm revolution of his 
hand, holding the brush long. Such a feat as this is 
completely possible to a well-disciplined painter's hand, 
but uttei-ly impossible to any other; and the circle so 
drawn was the most convincing proof Giotto could 
give of his decision of eye and perfectness of practice. 
• — Giotto and his Works, p. 11. 

Historical Painting. — Now, historical or simpiv 
narrative art is very precious in its proper place and 



THE GRAPHIC ARTS.— PAINTING. 77 

way, but it is never great art until the poetical or im- 
aginative power touches it. — M<xlerti JPaintO's, III., 
p. 57. 

Pure history and pure topography are most precious 
things ; in many cases more useful to the human race 
than high imaginative work; and assuredly it is in- 
tended that a large majority of all who are employed 
in art should never aim at anything higher. — Modern 
Painters, IV., p. 28. 

There does not exist, as far as I know, in the world a 
single example of a good historical picture (that is to 
say, of one which, allowing for necessary dimness in 
art as compared with nature, yet answers nearly the 
same ends in our minds as the sight of the real event 
would have answered) ; the reason being, the universal 
endeavor to get effects instead of facts, already shown 
as the root of false idealism. — Modern Painters, III., 
p. 109. 

What do you at present mean by historical painting? 
Now-a-days it means the endeavoring, by the power of 
imagination, to portray some historical event of past 
days. But in the middle ages, it meant representing 
the acts of their own days; and that is the only his- 
torical painting worth a straw. Of all the wastes of 
time and sense which modernism has invented — and 
they are many — none are so ridiculous as this endeavor 
to represent past history. What do you suppose our 
descendants will care for our imaginations of tlie events 
of former days ? Suppose the Greeks, instead of repre- 
senting their own waniors as they fought at Marathon, 
had left us nothing but their imaginations of Egyptian 
battles ; and suppose the Italians, in like manner, in- 
stead of portraits of Can Grande and Dante, or of Leo 
the Tenth and Raphael, had left r.s nothing but im- 
aginary portraits of Pericles and Miltiades? What 
fools we should have thougiit them ! how bitterly we 
should have been provoked with their folly ! And that 
is precisely what our descer.dants will feel towards us, 
so far as our grand historical and classical schools are 
concerned. — Lectures on ArcJiitecture, p. 117. 

Consider, even now, what incalculable treasure is 
still left in ancient bas-reliefs, full of every kind of 



78 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

legendary interest, of subtle expression, of priceless 
evidence as to the character, feelings, habits, histories, 
of past generations, in neglected and shattered churches 
and domestic buildings, rapidly disappearing over the 
whole of Europe — treasure which, once lost, the labor 
of all men living cannot bring back again; and then 
look at the myriads of men, with skill enough, if they 
had but the commonest schooling, to record all this 
faithfully, who are making their bread by drawing 
dances of naked women from academy models, or ideali- 
ties of chivalry fitted out with Wardour fStreet armor, 
or eternal scenes from Gil Bias, Don Quixote, and the 
Vicar of Wakefield, or mountain sceneries with young 
idiots of Londoners wearing Highland bonnets and 
brandishing rifles in the foregrounds. — Pre-Maphaelit- 
ism, p. 10. 

Marks of the Picturesque. — A broken stone has 
necessarily more various forms in it than a whole one ; 
a bent roof has more various curves in it than a 
straight one ; every excrescence or cleft involves some 
additional complexity of light and shade, and every 
stain of moss on eaves or wall adds to tlie delight ful- 
ness of color. Hrnce, in a completely picturesque ob- 
ject, as an old cottage or mill, there are introduced, by 
various circumstances not essential to it, but, on the 
whole, generally somewhat detrimental to it as cottage 
or mill, such elements of sublimity — complex light and 
shade, varied color, undulatory form, and so on — as 
can generally be found only in noble natural objects, 
woods, rocks, or mountains. This sublimity, belonging 
in a parasitical manner to the building, renders it, in 
the usual.sense of the word, " picturesque." — Modern 
Painters, IV., p. 17. 

The Picturesque at Home and Abroad. — Then 
[in England] that spirit of trimness. Tlie smooth pav- 
ing-stones; the scraped, hard, even, rutless roads ; the 
neat gates and plates, and essence of barder and order, 
and spikiness and spruceness. Abroad, a country- 
house has some confession of human weakness and 
human fates about it. There are the old grand gates 
still, which the mob pressed sore against at the 
Revolution, and the strained hinges have never gone so 



THE (111 A Pf!!( ' - 1 ,\'TS.—PAIXTTNG. 70 

well since ; and the broken greyhound on the pillar — 
still broken — better so ; but the long avenue is grace- 
fully pale with fresh green, and the courtyard bright 
with orange-trees ; the garden is a little run to waste — • 
since Mademoiselle v/as married nobody cares much 
about it ; and one range of apartments is shut up — 
nobody goes into them since Madame died. But 
with us, let who will bo married or die, we neglect 
nothing. All is polished and precise again next morn- 
ing ; and whether people are happy or miserable, poor 
or prosperous, still we sweep the stairs of a Saturday. 
— Modern Pdint&rs, IV., p. 15. 

The Lowkr Picturesque. — Even the love for the 
lower picturesque ought to be cultivated with care, 
wherever it exists ; not with any special view to the 
artistic, but to merely humane education. It will 
never really or seriously interfere with practical benevo- 
lence ; on the contrary, it will constantly lead, if asso- 
ciated with other benevolent principles, to a truer sym- 
pathy with the poor, and better understanding of the 
right ways of helping them ; and, in the present stage 
of civilization, it is the most important element o| 
character, not directly moral, \Thich can be cultivated 
in youth ; since it is mainly for the want of this feel- 
ing that we destroy so many ancient monuments, in 
order to erect*" handsome" streets and shops instead, 
which might just as well have been erected elsewhere, 
and whose effect on our minds, so far as they have any, 
is to increase every disposition to frivolity, expense, 
and display. — Modern Pulntevf^, IV., p. 23. 

Buying Pictures. — Nerer buy for yourselves, nor 
go to the foreign dealers ; but let any painter whom you 
know be entrusted, when he finds a neglected old 
picture in an old house, to try if he cannot get it for 
you; then, if yoa like it, keep it; if not, send it to the 
hammer, and you will find that you do not lose money 
on pictures so purchased. . . . Look around you for 
pictures that you really like, and by buying which you 
can help some genius yet unperished. — A Joy For 
Ever, pp. 62-70. 

Never grumble, but be glad when you hear of a new 
picture being bought at a large price. In the long run, 



so A RUSKIX ANTHOLOGY. 

the dearest pictures are always the best bargains ; 
and . . . there are sonio pictures which are without 
price. You should stand, nationally, at the edge of 
Dover cliffs — Shakespeare's — and wave blank cheques 
in the eyes of the nations on the other side of the sea, 
freely offered, for such and such canvases of theirs. — 
A Joy For E-ccr, p. Gl. 

Copies of Pictures. — Never buy a copy of a picture, 
under any circumstances whatever. All copies are 
bad ; because no painter who is worth a straw ever 
xoill copy. He will make a study of a picture he likes, 
for his own use, in his own way; but he won't and 
can't copy ; whenever you buy a copy, you buy so 
much misunderstanding of the original, and encourage 
a dull person in following a business he is not fit for, 
besides increasing ultimately chances of mistake and 
imposture, and iarthering, as directly as money can 
farther, the cause of ignorance in all directions. You 
may, in fact, consider yourself as having purchased a 
certain quantity of mistakes; and, accoi;ding to your 
powei', being engaged in disseminating them. 

I do not mean, however, that copies should never be 
made. A certain number of dull persons should always 
be employed by a Government in making the most ac- 
curate copies possible of all good pictures ; these copies, 
though artistically valueless, would be historically and 
documentarily valuable, in the event of the destruction 
of the original picture. The studies also made by great 
artists for their own use, should be souglit after with 
the greatest eagerness; they are often to be bought 
cheap; and in connection with mechanical copies, 
would become very precious: tracings from frescos and 
other large works are all of great value ; for though a 
tracintr is liable to just as many mistakes as a copy, the 
mistakes in a tracing are of one kind only, which may 
be allowed for, but the mistakes of a common copyist 
are of all conceivable kinds: finally, engravings, in so 
far as they convey certain facts about the pictures, are 
often serviceable and valuable. — .4 Joy For Ever, 
p. 61. 

The prices now given without hesitation for nearly 
worthless original drawings by first-rate artists, would 



THE GRAPHIC ARTS. — PAINTING. 81 

obtain fur the misguided buyers, in something like a 
proportion of ten to one, most precious [colored] copies 
of drawings which can only be represented at all in en- 
graving by entire alteration of their treatment, and 
abandonme'Jt of their finest purposes. I feel this so 
strongly, that I have given my best attention, during 
upwards of ten years, to train a copyist to perfect fi- 
delity in rendering the work of Turner. — Ariadne, 
p. 1-J7. 

The men whose quiet patience and exquisite manual 
dexterity are at present employed in producing large 
and costly plates, such as that of the Belle Jardiniere 
ds Florence, by M. Boucher Deduoyers, should be en- 
tirely released from their servile toil, and employed ex- 
clusively in producing colored copies, or light drawings, 
from the original work. Tlie same number of hours of 
labor, applied with the like conscientious skill, would 
multiply precious likenesses of tha real picture, full of 
subtle veracities which no steel line could approach, 
and conveying, to thousands, true knowledge and un- 
affected enjoyment of painting; while the finished 
plate lies uncared for in the portfolio of the virtuoso, 
serving only, so far as it is seen in the print-seller's 
window by the people, to make them think that sacred 
painting must always be dull, and imnatural. — Ari- 
(ichte. p. 143. 

The Picture Dealer. — The existence of the mod- 
ern picture dealer is impossible in any city or country 
where art is to prosper; but soine day I hope to ar- 
range a " bottega " f or the St. George's Company, in 
which water-color drawings shall be sold, none being 
received at higher price than fifty guineas, nor at less 
than six — (Front's old fixed standard for country deal- 
ers,) — and at the commission of one guinea to the 
shop-keeper, paid by the buyer ; on the understanding 
that the work is, by said shopkeeper, known to be good, 
and warranted as such ; just as simply as a dealer in 
cheese or meat answers for the quality of those articles. 
— Fors, IV., p. G8. 

Pehambulant Art. — Every noble picture is a man- 
uscript book, of which only one copy exists, or ever 
can exist. — Arroics of the CViace, 'p. 59. 



83 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

I had rather see the whole Turner Collection buried, 
not merely in the cellars of the National Gallery, but, 
with Prospero's staff, fathoms in the earth, than that it 
should be the means of inaugurating the fatal custom 
of carrying great works of art about the roads for a 
show. If you must make them educational to the pub- 
lic, hang Titian's Bacchus up for a vintner's sign, and 
give Henry VI.'s Psalter for a spelling-book to the 
Bluecoat School; but, at least, hang the one from a 
permanent post, and chain the other to the boys' desks, 
and do not send them about in caravans to every 
annual Bartholomew Fair. — Arrotrs of the Chace, I., 
p. 04. 

In Picture Galleries. — (1.) You may look, with 
trust in their being always right, at Titian, Veronese, 
Tintoret, Giorgione, John Bellini, and Velasquez; the 
authenticity of the picture being of course established 
for you by proper authority. 

(2.) You may look with admiration, admitting, how- 
ever, question of right and wrong, at Van Eyek, Hol- 
bein, Perugino, Francia, Angelico, Leonardo da Vinci, 
Correggio, Vandyck, Rembrandt, Reynolds, Gains- 
borough, Turner, and the modern Pre-Raphaelites. 
You had better look at no other painters than these, 
for you run a chance, otherwise, of being led far off 
the road, or into grievous faults, by some of the other 
great ones, as Michael Angelo, Raphael, and Rubens ; 
and of being, besides, corrupted in taste by the base 
ones, as Murillo, Salvator, Claude, Gaspar Poussin. 
Teniers, and such others. You may look, however, 
for examples of evil, with safe universality of reproba- 
tion, being sure that everything you see is bad, at 
Domenichino, the Caracci, Bronzino, and the figure pieces 
of Salvator. — Elements of Drawing., pp. 186, 187. 

The Laws of Paintino as fixed as those of 
Chemistry. — It is as ridiculous for any one to speak 
positively about painting who has not given a great 
part of his life to its study, as it would be for a per- 
son who had never studied chemistry to give a lecture 
on affinities of elements ; but it is also as ridiculous 
for a person to speak hesitatingly about laws of jiaint- 
ing who has conscientiously given his time to tlieir 



THE GRAPHIC ARTS.— PAINTING. 83 

ascertainment:, as it would he for Mr. Faraday to an- 
nounce in a dubious manner that iron had an affinity 
for oxygen, and to put the question to the vote of his 
audience whether it had or not. — Modern Painters, 
III., p. 9. 

Given the materials, the limits of time, and the condi- 
tions of place, there is only one proper method of paint- 
ing. And since, if painting is to be entirely good, the ma- 
terials of it must be the best possible, and the conditions 
of time and place entirely favorable, there is only one 
mannerof entirely good painting. Theso-called "styles" 
of artists are either adaptations to imperfections of 
material, or indications of imperfection in their own 
jiower, or the knowledge of their day. The great 
painters are like each other in their strength, and di- 
verse only in weakness. — T^mos of Fesole, p. 14. 

The World's Greatest Pictures. — The pictures 
that are most valued are for the most part those by 
masters of established renown, which are highly or 
neatly finished, and of a size small enough to admit 
of their being placed in galleries or saloons, so as to be 
made subjects of ostentation, and to be easily seen by 
a crowd. For the support of the fame and value of such 
pictures, little more is necessary than that they should 
be kept bright, partly by cleaning, which is incipient 
destruction, and partly by what is called " restoring," 
that is, painting over, which is of course total destruc- 
tion. Nearly all the gallery pictures in modern Eu- 
rope have been more or less destroyed by one or other 
of these operations, generally exactly in proportion to 
the estimation in which they are held ; and as, originally, 
the smaller and more highly finished works of any great 
master are usually his worst, the contents of many of 
our most celebrated galleries are by this time, in reality, 
of very small value indeed. 

On the other hand, the most precious works of any 
noble painter are usually those which have been done 
quickly, and in the heat of the first thought, on a large 
scale, for places where there was little likelihood of their 
being well seen, or from patrons from whoin there was 
little prospect of rich remuneration. In general, the best 
things are done in this way, or else in the enthusiasm 



8i A nUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

and pride of accomplishing some great purpose, such as 
painting a cathedral or a campo-santo from one end 
to the other, especially when the time lui) been short, 
and circumstances disadvantageous. 

Works thus executed are of course despised, on ac- 
count of their quantity, as well as their frequent slight- 
ness, in the places where they exist; and they are too 
large to be portable, and too vast and comprehensive to 
be read on the spot, in the hasty temper of the present 
age. They are, therefore, almost universally neglected, 
whitewashed by custodes, shot at by soldiers, suffered 
to drop from the walls piecemeal in powder and rags by 
society in general; but, which is an advantage nioie 
than counterbalancing all this evil, they are not often 
" restored.'' What is left of them, however fragmentary, 
however ruinous, however obscured and defiled, is almost 
always the real thing,' there are no fresh readings : 
and therefore the greatest treasures of art which Europe 
at tliis moment possesses are pieces of old plaster on 
ruinous brick walls, where the lizards burrow and 
bask, and which few other living creatures ever ap- 
proach ; and torn sheets of dim canvas, in waste corners 
of churches ; and mildewed stains, in the shape of human 
figures, on the walls of dark chambers, which now and 
then an exploring traveller causes to be unlocked by 
their tottering custode, looks hastily round, and retreats 
from in a weary satisfaction at his accomplished duty. 
— Stones of Venice, II., pp. 301>, 870. 

LuiM. — Luini is, perhaps, the best central type of 
the highly-trained Italian painter. He is the only man 
who entirely united the religious temper which was the 
spirit-life of art, with the physical power which was its 
bodily life. He joins the purity and passion of Angelico 
to the strength of Veronese- the two elements, poised 
in perfect balance, and are so calmed and restrained, 
each by the other, that most of us lose tiie sense of 
both. The artist does not see the strength by reason 
of the .chastened spirit in which it is used ; and the re- 
ligious visionary does not recognize the passion, by 
reason of (he fi'jvr.k human truth with which it is ren- 
dered. He i; a man ten times greater than Leonardo ; 
— a mighty colorist, while Lec<nardo was only a fine 
draughtsman in black, staining the chiaroscuro drawing, 



THE GRA PHJC A 1 .' TS. —FA I NTING. m 

like a colored print: he perceived and rendered the 
delicatest types of human beauty that have been painted 
since the days of the Greeks, while Leonardo depraved 
his finer instincts by caricature, and remained to the 
end of his days the slave of an archaic smile: and he is 
a designer as frank, instinctive, and exhaustless as 
Tintoret, while Leonardo's design is only an agony of 
science, admired chiefly because it is painful, and capa- 
ble of analysis in its best accomplishment. Luini has 
left nothing behind him that is not lovely ; but of his 
life I believe hardly anything is known beyond rem- 
nants of tradition which murmur about Lugano and 
Saronno ; and which remain ungleaned. — Athena, 
p. 119. 

The Art or Moulding and Painting Porcelain. 
— One of the ultimate results^ of such craftsmanship 
might be the production of pictures as brilliano as 
painted glass — as delicate as the most subtle water- 
colors, and more permanent than tlie Pyramids. — Lec- 
tures on Art, p. 85. 

PiGMENTvS AND Metiiods OF WoRK. — There is not, I 
believe, at this moment, a single question which could 
be put respecting pigments and methods, on which 
the body of living artists would agree in their 
answers. The lives of artists are passed in fruitless 
experiments; fruitless, because undirected by experi- 
ence and uncommunicated in their results. Every man 
has methods of his own, which he knows to be insuffi- 
cient, and yet jealously conceals from his fellow-work- 
men : every colorman has materials of his own, to 
which it is rare that the artist can trust : and in the 
very front of the majestic advance of chemical science, 
theempirical science of the artist has been annihilated, 
and the days which should have led us to higher perfec- 
tion are passed in guessing at, or in mourning over, 
lost processes ; while the so-called Dark Ages, possess- 
ing no more knowledge of chemistry than a village 
herbalist does now, discovered, established, and put 
into daily practice such methods of operation as have 
made their work, this day, the despair of all who look 
upon it. — /Stones of Venice, IIL, p, 40. 



86 A n USKIX A NTHOL OGY. 



RELIGIOUS PAINTING.- 

The religious passion is nearly always vividest when 
the art is weakest; and the technical skill only reaches 
its deliberate splendor when the ecstacy which gave it 
birth has passed away forever. — Athetia, p. 7(5. 

No painter belonging to the purest religious schools 
ever mastered his art. Perugino nearly did so ; but it was 
because he was more rational — more a man of the world 
— than the rest. No literature exists of a high class pro- 
duced by minds in the pure religious temper. On the 
contrary, a great deal of literature exists, produced by 
persons in that temper, which is markedly, and very 
far, below average literary work. 

The reason of this I believe to be, that the right faith 
of man is not intended to give him repose, but to en- 
able him to do his work. It is not intended that he 
should look away from the place he lives in now, and 
cheer himself with thoughts of the place he is to live in 
next, but that he should look stoutly into this world, in 
faith that if he does his work thm-oughly here, some 
good to others or himself, with which, however, he 
is not at present concerned, will come of it hereafter. 
And this kind of brave, but not very hopeful or cheer- 
ful faith, I perceive to be always rewarded by clear 
practical success and splendid intellectual power ; while 
the faith which dwells on the future fades away into 
rosy mist, and emptiness of musical air. — Modern 
Painters, V., p. 225. 

Has there, then . . . been no true religious ideal '? 
Has religious art never been of any service to mankind \ 
I fear, on the whole, not. Of true religious ideal, re- 
presenting events historically recorded, with solemn 
effort at a sincere and unartificial conception, there ex- 
ist, as yet, hardly any examples. Nearly all good re- 
ligious pictures fali into one or other branch of the false 
ideal already examined, either into the Angeliean 
(passic.nate ideal) or the Raphaelesque (philosophical 
ideal). But there is one true form of religious art, 

* Compare what is said iu the Introduction on Epochs in Ruskin's 
art-life. 



'IHE GRAPHIC ARTS.-PAINTING. 87 

neverthelct^s, in the pictures of the passionate ideal 
which represent imaginary beings of another world. — 
Modern Painters, III., p. 75. 

Wings and Claws in RELiGiors Art. — If j'ou were 
to take away from religious art these two great helps 
of its— I must say, on the whole, very feeble— imagina- 
tion ; if you were to take from it, I say, the power of 
putting wings on shoulders, and claws on fingers and 
toes, how wonderfully the sphere of its angelic and 
diabolic characters would be contracted ! Reduced only 
to the sources of expression in face or movements, you 
might still find in good early sculpture very sufficient 
devils ; but the best angels would resolve themselves, 
I think, into little more than, and not often into 
so much as, the likenesses of pretty women, with 
that grave and (I do not say it ironically) majestic 
expression which they put on, when, being very fond 
of their husbands and children, they seriously think 
either the one or the other have misbehaved themselves. 
— Lot'c'.^ Meinie^ p. 11 . 

Art in the Time of Raphael. — In early rlmos (7;-^ 
ti'us onployed for the displai/ of reUgloKs fxctx ; 
now, relu/iom facts were eniploi/ed for the display 
of art. The 'transition, though imperceptible, was 
consummate; it involved the entire destiny of painting. 
It was passing from the paths of life to the paths of 
death. . . . 

The painter had no longer any religious passion to 
express. He could think of the Madonna now very 
• calmly, with no desire to pour out the treasures of 
earth "^at her feet, or crown her brows with the golden 
shafts of heaven. He could think of her as an available 
subject for the disphiy of transparent shadows, skilful 
tints, and scientific foreshortenings — as a fair woman, 
forming, if well painted, a pleasant piece of furniture 
for the'corner of a boudoir, and best imagined by com- 
bination of the beauties of the prettiest contadinas. — 
Modern Painters, III., p. 08. 

The Highest Art no Encourager ok Idolatry or 
Religion. — The highest branches of the fine arts are no 
encouragers either of idolatry or of religion. No pic- 
ture of Leonardo's or Raphael's, no statue of Michael 



88 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

Angelo's has ever been worshipped, except by accident. 
Carelessly regarded, and by ignorant persons, there is 
less to attract in them tlian in commoner v/orks. Care- 
fully regarded, and by intelligent persons, they instantly 
divert the mind from their subject to their art, so that 
admiration takes the place of devotion. . . . Effective 
religious art, therefore, has always lain, and I believe 
must always lie, between the two extremes — of barbar- 
ous idol-fashioning on one side, and magnificent crafts- 
manship on the other. It consists partly in missal 
painting, and such book-illustrations as, since the in- 
vention of printing, have taken its place ; partly in 
glass-painting ; partly in rude sculpture on the outsides 
of buildings ; partly in mosaics ; and partly in the 
frescos and tempera pictures which, in the fourteenth 
century, formed the link between this powerful, because 
imp?rfect, religious art, and the impotent perfection 
which succeeded it. 

But of all these branches the most important are 
the inlaying and mosaic of the twelfth and thirteenth 
centuries, represented in a central manner by [the] 
mosaics of St. Mai'k's. — !^to)ics of Ve/dce, II., pp. 
112, 11.3. 

Angelico in his Cell at Fiesole. — The little cell 
was as one of the houses of heaven prepared for him by his 
master. " What need had it to be elsewhere? Was not 
the Val d'Arno, with its olive woods in white blossom, 
paradise enough for a poor monk ? or could Christ be 
indeed in heaven more than here 1 Was he not always 
with him? Could he breathe or see, but that Christ 
breathed beside him and looked into his eyes '? Under 
every cypress avenue the angels walked ; he had seen 
their white robes, whiter than tlie dawn, at his bedside, 
as he awoke in early summer. They had sung with 
him, one on each side, when his voice failed for joy at 
sweet vesper and matin time ; his eyes were blinded by 
their wings in the sunset, when it sank behind the hills 
of Luni," — 3Iodern Painters, V., p. 306, 

The life of Angelico was almost entirely spent in the 
endeavor 1.o imagine the beings belonging to another 
world. By purity of life, habitual elevation of thought, 
and natural sweetness of disposition, he was enabled to 



THE aUAPHIC ARTS.— PAINTING. 89 

Gxj)ress the saerod affections upon the human counte- 
naiu'e as no one over did before or since. In order to 
effect clearer distinction between heavenly beings and 
those of this world, he represents the former as clothed 
in draperies of the pui-est color, crowned with glories of 
burnished gold and entirely shadowless. With exqui- 
site choice of gesture, and disposition of folds of 
drapeiy, this un^le of treatment gives perhaps the best 
idea of spiritual beings which the human mind is capable 
of forming.. Itis, therefore, a true ideal; bat the mode 
in which it is arrived at (being so far mechanical and 
contradictory of the appearances of nature) necessarily 
precludes those who practise it from being complete 
masters of their art. It is always childish, but beautiful 
in its childishness. — Modern. Painters, III., p. S>1. 

The Religious Art of Italy. — As I was correcting 
these pages [18()0], there was put into my hand a little 
work by a very dear friend — " Travels and Study in 
Italy," by Charles Eliot Norton ; — I have not yet been 
able to do more than glance at it ; but my impression is, 
that by carefidly reading it, together v.ith the essay by 
the same writer on the Vita Nuova of Dante, a more 
just estimate may be formed of the religious art of 
Italy than by the study of any other books yet existing. 
At least, I have seen none in which the tone of thouglit 
was at once so tender and so just. — Modern Pu'tntvrs, 
v., p. 307. 

Moses not vet paixted. — All the histories of the 
Bible are, in my judgment, yet waiting to be painted. 
Moses has never been painted; Elijah never; David 
never (except as a mere ruddy stripling) ; Deborah 
never; Gideon never; Isaiah never. — Modern Paint- 
ers, III., p. 70. 

Modern Religious Akt. — In polities, religion is 
now a name; in art, a hypocrisy or affectation. Over 
German religious pictures the inscription, " See how 
Pious I am," can be read at a glance by any clear- 
sighted person. Over French and English religious 
pictures, the inscription, "See how Impious I am," is 
equally legible. All sincere and modest art is, among 
us, profane. — Modern Painters, III., p. 277. 



t)0 A Ji'USKIN ANTHOLOGY. 



VENICE AND THE VENETIAN PAINTERS. 

Since the first dominion of men was asserted over 
the ocean, three thrones, of mark beyond all others, 
have been set upon its sands: the thrones of Tyre, 
Venice, and England. Of the First of these great 
powers only the memory remains ; of the Second, the 
ruin; the Third, whicli inherits their greatness, if it 
forget their example, may be led tlii'ough prouder emi- 
nence to less pitied destruction. 

The exaltation, the sin, and the punishment of Tyre 
have been recorded for us, in perhaps the most touch- 
ing words ever uttered by the Prophets of Israel against 
the cities of the strangei'. But we read them as a 
lov.'ly song; and close our ears to the sternness of their 
warning : for the very depth of the Fall of Tyre has 
blinded us to its reality, and we forget, as we watch the 
bleaching of the rocks between the sunshine and tlie 
.sea, that they were once " as in Eden, the Garden of 
God." 

Her successor, like her in perfection of beauty, tliougli 
less in endurance of dominion, is still left for our be- 
holding in the final period other decline: a ghost upon 
the sands of the sea, so weak — so quiet — so bereft of 
all but her loveliness, that we might well doubt, as we 
watched her faint refiection in the mirage of the lagoon, 
which was the City, and which the Shadow. 

I would endeavor to trace the lines of this image 
before it be forever lost, and to record, as far as I may, 
the warning which seems to me to be uttered by every 
one of the fast-gaining waves, that beat, like passing 
bells, against the Stones of Venice. — Stones of 
Venice, I., p. IT). 

TiiK AprROACfi TO Venice by Sea in the Olden 
Days. — Not but that the aspect of the city itself was 
generally the source of some slight disappointment, for, 
seen in this direction, its buildings are far less characteris- 
tic than those of the other great towns of Italy ; but this 
inferiority was partly disgui.sed by distance, and more 
than atoned for by the strange rising of its walls and 
towers out of the midst, as it seemed, of the deep sea, 



THE GRAPHIC ARTS.— PAINTING. 91 

for it was impossible that the mind or the eye could at 
once comprehend the shallowness of the vast sheet of 
water which stretched away in leagues of rippling 
lustre to the north and south, or trace the narrow line 
of islets bounding it to the east. The salt breeze, the 
white moaning sea-birds, the masses of black weed 
separating and disappearing gradually, in knots of 
heaving shoal, under the advance of the steady tide, all 
proclaimed it to be indeed the ocean on whose bosom 
the great city rested so calmly ; not such blue, soft, 
lake-like ocean as bathes the Neapolitan promontoi'ies, 
or sleeps beneath the marble rocks of Genoa, but a sea 
with the bleak power of our own northern waves, yet 
subdued into a strange spacious rest, and changed from 
its angry pallor into afield of burnished gold, as the sun 
declined behind the belfry tower of the lonely island 
church, fitly named '■ St. George of the Seaweed." As 
the boat drew nearer to the city, the coast which the 
traveller had just left sank behind him into one long, 
low, sad-colored line, tufted irregularly with briishw^ood 
and willows ; but, at what seemed its northern extrem- 
ity, the hills of Arqua rose in a dark cluster of purple 
pyramids, balanced on the bright mirage of the lagoon ; 
two or three smooth surges of inferior hill extended 
themselves about their roots, and beyond these, begin- 
ning with the craggy peaks above Vicenza, the chain of 
the Alps girded the whole horizon to the north — a wall 
of jagged blue, here and there slewing through its 
clefts a wilderness of misty precipices, fading far back 
into the recesses of Cadore, and itself rising and break- 
ing away eastward, where the sun struck opposite upon 
its snow, into mighty fragments of peaked light, stand- 
ing up behind the barred clouds of evening, one after 
another, countless, the crown of the Adrian Sea, until 
the eye turned back from pursuing them, to rest upon 
the nearer burning of the campaniles of Murano, and on 
the great city, where it magnified itself alons the waves, 
as the quick silent pacing of the gondola drew nearer and 
nearer. And at last, when its walls were reached, and 
the outmost of its untrodden streets was entered, not 
through towered gate or guarded rampart, but as a deep 
inlet between two rocks of coral in the Indian sea;wnen 
first upon the traveller's sight opened the long mnges 



93 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

(j£ columned palaces — eaeli wilh its black boat moored 
at the portal — each with its image cast down, beneath 
its feet, upon that green pavement w'hich every breeze 
broke into new fantasies of rich tessellation ; when first, 
at the extremity of the bright vista, the shadowy 
Rialto threw its colossal curve slowly forth from 
behind the palace of the Camerlenglii ; that strange 
curve, so delicate, so adamantine, strong as a mountain 
cavern, graceful as a bow just bent; when first, before 
its moonlike circumference was all risen, the gondolier's 
cry, " Ah ! Stall," struck sharp upon the ear, and the 
prow turned aside under the mighty cornices that half 
met over the narrow canal, where the plash of the 
water followed close and loud, ringing along the marble 
by the boat's side ; and when at last that boat darted 
forth upon the breadth of silver sea, across which the 
front of the Ducal palace, flushed with its sanguine veins, 
looks to the snowy dome of Our Lady of Salvation, it was 
no marvel that the mind should be so deepl}' entranced 
by the visionary charm of a scene so beautiful and so 
strange, as to forget the darker truths of its history and 
its being. . . . 

At high water no land is visible for many miles to the 
north or south of Venice, except in the form of small 
islands crow^ned with towers or gleaming with villages : 
there is a channel, some three miles wide, between the 
city and the mamland, and some mile and a half v/ide 
between it and the sandy breakwater called the Lido, 
which divides the lagoon from the Adriatic, but which 
is so low as liardly to disturb the impression of the 
city's having been built in the midst of the ocean, al- 
though the secret of its true position is partly, not yet 
painfully, betrayed by the clusters of pileh set to mark 
the deep-water channels, which andulate far away in 
spotty chains like the studded backs of huge sea-snakes, 
and by the quick glittering of the crisped iind crowded 
waves that flicker and dance before the strong winds 
upon the unlifted level of the shallow sea. But the 
scene is widely different at low tide. A fall ot eighteen 
or twenty inches is enough to show ground over the 
greater part of the lagoon ; and at i\\^ complete ebb the 
city is seen standing in the midst of a dark plain of 
seaweed, of gloomy green, except only where the 



THE GRAPHIC ARTS.—FAIXTISG. 03 

larger branches of the Brenta and its associated streams 
converge towards the port of the Lido. Through this 
salt and sombre plain the gondola and the fishing-boat 
advance by tortuous channels, seldom more than four 
or feet five deep, and often so choked with slime that 
the heavier keels furrow the bottom till their crossing 
tracks are seen through the clear sea water like the ruts 
upon a wintry road, and the oar leaves blue gaslies upon 
the ground at every stroke, or is entangled among the 
thick weed that fringes the banks with the weight of its 
sullen waves, leaning to and fro upon the luicei-tain 
sway of the exhausted tide. The scene is often pro- 
foundly oppressive, even at this day, when every jilot 
of higher ground bears some fragment of fair building; 
but, in order to knowVhat it was once, let the traveller 
follow in his boat at evening the windings of some un- 
frequented channel far into the midst of the melancholy 
plain ; let him remove, in his imagination, the bi'ight- 
?iess of the great 'city that still extends itself in the 
distance, and the walls and towers from the islands that 
are near ; and so wait, until the bright investiture and 
■^weet warmth of the sunset are withdrawn from the 
waters, and the black desert of their shore lies in its na- 
keduess beneath the night, pathless, comfortless, infirm, 
lost in dark languor and fearful.silence, except where the 
salt runlets plash into the tideless pools, or the seabirds 
flit from their margins with a questioning cry ; and he will 
be enabled to enter in some sort into the horror of 
heart with which this solitude was anciently chosen by 
man for his habitation. They little thought, who first 
drove the stakes into the sand, and strewed the ocean 
reeds for their rest, that their children were to be the 
princes of that ocean, and their palaces its pi'ide ; and 
yet, in the great natural laws that rule that soi'rowful 
wilderness, let it be remiembered what strange prepa- 
lation had been made for the things which no human 
imagination could have f ofetold, and how the whole ex- 
istence and fortune of the Venetian nation v/ere antici- 
pated or compelled, by the setting of those bars and 
doors to the rivers and the sea. Had deeper currents 
divided their islands, hostile navies would again and 
again have reduced the rising city into servitude ; had 
stronger surges beaten their shores, all the richness and 



94 A RUSKIX AXTHOLGGY. 

refinement of the Venetian architectui-o must nave been 
exchanged for the walls and bulwarks of an ordinary 
sea-port. Had there been no tide, as in other parts of 
the Mediterranean, the narrow canals of the city would 
have become noisome, and the marsh in which it was 
built pestiferous. Had the tide been only a foot or 
eighteen inches higher in its rise, the water-access to 
the doors of the palaces would have been impossible : 
even as it is, there is sometimes a little difficulty, at the 
ebb, in landing without setting foot upon the lower and 
slippery steps : and the highest tides sometimes enter 
the courtyards, and overflow the entrance halls. — 
Atones of Venice, H., pp. 7-lo. 

Old Venice like Old Yarmouth. — For seven 
hundred years Venice had more likeness in her to old 
Yarmouth than to new Pall Mall; and you might 
come to shrewder guess of what she and her people 
were like, by living for a year or two lovingly among 
the herring-catchers of Yarmouth Roads, or the boat- 
men of Deal or Bo castle, than by reading any lengths 
of eloquent history. But you are to know also, and 
remember always, that this amphibious city — this Pho- 
cfea, or sea-dog of towns— looking with soft human 
eyes at you from the sand, Proteus himself latent in 
the salt-smelling skin of her — had fields, and plots of 
garden here and there; and, far and near, sweet woods 
of Calypso, graceful with quivering sprays, for woof of 
nests — gaunt with forked limbs for ribs or ships ; had 
good milk and butter from familiarly couchant cows ; 
thickets wherein familiar birds could sing ; and finally 
was observant of clouds and sky, as pleasant and useful 
phenomena. And she had at due distances among her 
simple dwellings, stately churches of marble. — St. 
Mark's Best, ^.^\. 

The Gothic Palaces of Venice. — Happily, in the 
pictures of Gentile Bellini, the fresco coloring of the 
Gothic palaces is recorded, as it still remained in his 
time ; not with rigid accuracy, but quite distinctly 
enough to enable us, by comparing it with the existing 
colored designs in the manuscripts and glass of the 
period, to ascertain })recisely what it must have been. 

The walls were generally covered with chequers of 



THE GRAPHIC ARTS.— PAINTING. 95 

very warm color, a russet inclining to scarlet, more or 
less relieved with white, black, and grey; as still seen in 
the only example which, having been executed in 
marble, has been jjerfectly preserved, the front of the 
Ducal Palace. ... 

On these russet or crimson backgrounds the entire 
space of the series of windows was relieved, for the 
most part, as a subdued white field of alabaster ; and 
on this delicate and veined white were set the circular 
disks of purple and green. The arms of the family were 
of course blazoned in their own proper colors, but I 
think generally on a pure azure ground ; the blue color 
is still left behind the shields in the CasaPriuli and one 
or two more of the palaces which are unrestored, and 
the blue ground was used also to relieve the sculptures 
of religious subject. Finally, all the mouldings, capitals, 
cornices, cusps, and traceries were either entirely 
gilded or profusely touched with gold. 

The whole front of a Gothic palace in Venice may, 
therefore, be simply described as a field of subdued 
russet, quartered with broad sculptured masses of while 
and gold ; these latter being relieved by smaller inlaid 
fragments of blue, purple, and deep green. — ^Stones of 
Venice, III., pp. 25, 2G. 

The Venetian habitually incrusted his work with 
nacre ; he built his houses, even the meanest, as if he 
had been a shell-fish — roughly inside, mother-of-pearl 
on the surface : he was content, perforce, to gather the 
clay of the Brenta banks, and bake it into brick for his 
substance of wall; but he overlaid it with the wealth of 
ocean, with the most precious foreign marbles. You 
might fancy early Venice one wilderness of brick, which 
a petrifying sea had beaLen upon till it coated it with 
marble : at first a dark city — washed white by the sea 
foam. — Stones of Venice, I., p. 268. 

Such, then, was that first and fairest Venice which 
rose out of the barrenness of the lagoon, and the 
sorrow of her people ; a city of graceful arcades and 
gleaming walls, veined with azure and warm with gold, 
and fretted with white sculpture like frost upon forest 
branches turned to marble. — Stones of Venice, II., 
p. lU. 



96 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

A Golden City. — A city of marble, did I say? nay, 
rather a golden city, paved with emerald. For truly, 
every pinnacle and turret glanced or glowed, overlaid 
with gold, or bossed with jasper. Beneath, the unsullied 
sea drew in deep breathing, to and fro, in eddies of 
green wave. Deep-hearted, majestic, terrible as the 
sea — the men of Venice moved in sway of power and 
war ; pure as her pillars of alabaster, stood her mothers 
and maidens ; from foot to brow, all noble, walked her 
knights ; the low bronzed gleaming of searrusted armor 
shot angrily under their blood-red mantle-folds. Fear- 
less, faithful, patient, impenetrable, implacable — every 
word a fate — sate her senate. In hope and honor, lulled 
by flowing of v/ave around their isles of sacred .sand, 
each with his name written and the cross graved at his 
side, lay her dead. A wonderful piece of world. 
Rather, itself a world. It lay along the face of the 
waters, no larger, as its captains saw it from their 
masts at evening, than a bar of sunset that could not 
pass away ; but, for its power, it must have seemed to 
them as if they were sailing in the expanse of heaven, 
and this a great planet, whose orient edge widened 
through ether. — Modem Pabtters, V., p. 308. 

The Venice of Bvron. — The Venice of modern 
fiction and drama is a thing of yesterday, a mere efllor- 
escence of decay, a stage dream which the first rtty of 
daylight must dissipate into dust. No prisoner, whose 
name is worth remembering, or whose sorrow desert ed 
sympathy, ever crossed that " Bridge of Sighs," which 
is the centre of the Byronic ideal of Venice; no 
great merchant of Venice ever saw that Rialto under 
which the traveller now passes with breathless interest : 
the statue which Byron makes Faliero address as of one 
of his great ancestors was erected to a soldier of fortune 
a hundred and fifty years after Faliero's death ; and the 
most conspicuous parts of the city have been so entirely 
altered in the course of the last three centuries, that if 
Henry Dandolo or Francis Foscari could be summoned 
from their tombs, and stood each on the deck of his galley 
at the entrance of the Grand Canal, that renowned en- 
trance, the painter's favorite subject, the novelist's fa- 
vorite scene, where the water first nai"ov>'s liy tiie stciis 



THE GRAPHIC AnTS.—PAIXTING. 97 

of the Chuvcli of La Salute — the mighty Doges would 
not know in what spot of the world they stood, would 
literally not recognize one stone of the great city, for 
whose sake, and by whose ingratitude, their gray hairs 
had been brouglit down with bitterness to the grave. 
The remains of t/iei?' Venice lie hidden behind the 
ciunbrous masses v/hich were the delight of the nation 
in its dotage ; hidden in ma^iy a grass-grown court, and 
silent pathway, and lightless canal, where the slow 
waves have sapped their foundations for five hundred 
years, and must soon prevail over them forever.— 
j!'^fones of Venice, II., p. {>. 

Venick, 23rd Jim e. [1871.] 
Modern Venice. — My letter will be a day or two 
late, I fear, after all ; for I can't wiite this morning, 
because of the accursed whistling of the dirty steam- 
engine of the omnibus for Lido, waiting at the quay of 
the Ducal Palace for the dirty population of Venice, 
which is now neither fish nor flesh, neither noble nor fish- 
erman — cannot afford to be rowed, nor has strength nor 
sense enough to row itself ; but su)okes and spits up and 
down the piazzetta all day, and gets itself dragged by a 
screaming kettle to Lido next morning, to sea-bathe it- 
self into capacity for more tobacco. — 7u:>rs, I., p. 250. 

The Sanity and Strength of the Venetian 
Character. — [The Venetians were] always quarrelling 
with the Pope. Their religious liberty came, like their 
bodily health, from that wave-training; for it is one 
notable effect of a life passed on shipboard to destrov 
weak beliefs in appointed forms of religion. A 
sailor may be grossly superstitious, but his supersti- 
tions will be connected with amulets and omens, not 
cast in systems. He must accustom himself, if he 
prays at all, to pray anywhere and anyhow. Candle- 
sticks and incense not being portable into tlie maintop, 
he perceives those decorations to be, on the whole, in- 
essential to a maintop mass. Sails must be set and 
cables bent, be it never so strict a saint's day, and it is 
found that no harm comes of it. Absolution on a lee- 
shoi'e must be had of the breakers, it appears, if at all, 
and they give it plenary and brief, without listening 
to confession. 



98 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

It is enough for the Florentine to know how to use 
his sword and to ride. We Venetians, also, must be 
able to use our swords, and on ground which is none of 
the steadiest ; but, besides, we must be able to do near- 
ly everything that hands can turn to — rudders, and 
yards, and cables, all needing workmanly handling and 
workmanly knowledge, from captain as well as from 
men. To drive a nail, lash a spar, reef a sail — rude 
work this for noble hands; but to be done sometimes, 
and done well, on pain of death. All which not only 
takes mean pride out of us, and puts nobler pride of 
power in its stead; l)ut it tends partly to soothe, partly 
to chasten, partly to employ and direct, the hot Italian 
temper, and make us every way greater, calmer, and 
happier. — Modern Painters, V., pp. 235, 236. 

The Religion of Venice. — The Venetians were 
t\\Q last believing Ac\\oo\ oi\ti\\y . . . . The Venetian re- 
ligion was true. Not only true, but one of tlie main 
motives of their lives. . . . For one profane picture 
by great Venetians you will find ten of sacred subjects ; 
and those, also, including their grandest, most labored, 
and most beloved works. Tintoret's power culminates 
in two great religious pictures: the Crucifixion and 
the Paradise. Titian's in the Assumption, the Peter 
Martyr, and Presentation of the Virgin. Veronese's in 
the Marriage in Cana. — Modern Painters, V., pp. 
240, 242. 

The decline of lier [Venice's] political prosperity 
was exactly coincident with that of domestic and 
individual religion. The most curious phenomenon in 
all Venetian history is the vitality of religion in private 
life, and its deadness in public policy. Amidst the enthu- 
siasm, chivalry, or fanaticism of the other states of Eu- 
rope, Venice stands, from first to last, like a masked stat- 
ue; her coldness impenetrable, her exertion only aroused 
by the touch of a secret spring. That spring was her 
commercial interest — this the one motive of all her im- 
portant political acts, or enduring national animosities.* 

* Years after tliis was written, Raskin admitted that he was wrong 
in the matter. " Venice," he says in his later note. " is superficially 
and apparently commercial: at heart jiassionately heroic and relig- 
ious; precisely the reverse of modeiii England, who is .superficially 
and apparently religious; and at lieart entirel.y infidel, cowardly, 
and dishonest. '"—aSYijucs of V(^nice. Iidrodmtory Chcvpiers. 1879. 



THE GRAPHIC ARTS.— PAINTING. 99 

She could forgive insults to her honor, but never rival- 
ship in her commerce; she calculated the glorv of her 
conquests by their value, and estimated their justice 
by their facility. 

Venice may well call upon us to note with reverence, 
that of all the towers which are still seen rising like a 
branchless forest from her islands, there is but one 
whose office was other than that of summoning to 
prayer, and that one was a watch-tower only : from 
first to last, while the palaces of the other cities of 
Italy were lifted into sullen fortitudes of rampart, and 
fringed with forked battlements for the javelin and the 
bow, the sands of Venice never sank under the weight 
of a war tower, and her roof terraces were wreathed 
with Arabian imagery, of golden globes suspended on 
the leaves of lilies. — /Sfo/zes of Yemce, pp. lS)-"24. 

Venetian Painting. — The great splendor of the 
Venetian school arises from their having seen and held 
from the beginning this great fact — that shadow is as 
much color -as hght, often much more. In Titian's 
fullest red the lights are pale rose-color, passing into 
white — the shadows warm deep crimson. In Veronese's 
most splendid orange, the lights are pale, the shadows 
crocus color; and so on. — Lectures on Art, p. 88. 

The Pride of Venetian Landscape. — The worst 
point we have to note respecting the spirit of Venetian 
landscape is its pride. . . . 

The Venetian possessed, and cared for, neither fields 
nor pastures. Being delivered, to his loss, from all the 
wholesome labors of tillage, he was also shut out from 
the sweet wonders and charities of the earth, and from 
the pleasant natural history of the year. . . . 

No simple joy was possible to him. Only stateliness 
and power; high intercourse with kingly and beautiful 
humanity, proud thoughts, or splendid pleasures ; 
throned sensualities, and ennobled appetites. — Modern 
Painters, V., pp. 239, 240. 

Religion in the Art of Titian. — The religion of 
Titian is like that of Shakespeare — occult behind his 
magnificent equity. . . . 

It had been the fashion before his time to make the 
Magdalen always y^ung and beautiful ; her, if no one 



100 A nUSKIX ANTHOLOGY. 

else, even the rudest painters flattered ; her repentanee 
was not thought perfect unless she had lustrous hair 
and lovely lips. Titian first dared to doubt the ro- 
mantic fable, and reject the nai'iovmess of sentimental 
faith. He saw that it was possible for plain women to 
love no less than beautiful ones; and for stout persons 
to repent as well as those more delicately made. It 
seemed to him that the Magdalen would have received 
her pardon not the less quickly because her wit wa,s 
none of the readiest ; and would not have been re- 
garded with less compassion by her Master because her 
eyes were swollen, or her dress disordered. 

Titian could have put issues of life and death into 
the face of a man asking the way ; nay, into the back 
of him, if he had so chosen. He has put a whole 
scheme of dogmatic theology into a row of bishops' 
backs at the Louvre. — Modern Painters, V., p. 248. 

Breadth and Realism of Venetian Art. — The 
Venetian mind, we have said, and Titian's especially, 
as the central type of it, was wholly realist, universal, 
and manly. 

In this breadth and realism, the painter saw that sen- 
sual passion in man was, not only a fact, but a Divine 
fact ; the human creature, though the highest of the 
animals, was, nevertheless, a perfect animal, and his 
hap{)iness, health, and nobleness depended on the due 
power of every animal passion, as well as the cultiva- 
tion of every spiritual tendency. 

He thought that every feeling of the mind and 
heart, as well as every form of the body, deserved 
painting. Also to a painter's true and highly trained 
instinct, the human body is the loveliest of all objects. I 
do not stay to trace the reasons why, at Venice, the 
female body could be found in more perfect beauty 
than the male; but so it was, and it becomes the princi- 
pal subject therefore, both with Giorgione and Titian. 
They painted it fearlessly, with all right and natural 
qualities ; never, however, representing it as exercising 
any overpowering attractive influence on man ; but 
only on the Faun or Satyr. 

Yet they did this so majestically that I am perfectly 
certain no untouched Venetian picture ever yet excited 
one base thought (otherwise than in base persons any- 



THE GRAPHIC ARTS.-PAINTING. 101 

thing may do so) ; while in the greatest studies of the 
female body by the Venetians, all other characters are 
overborne by majesty, and the form becomes as pure as 
that of a Greek statue. — Modern Painters, V., p. 249. 

The Pictures of Tintoret in^ the Scuola di San 
Rocco, Venice. — The number of valuable pictures is 
fifty-two ; arranged on the walls and ceilings of three 
rooms, so badly lighted, in consequence of the admirable 
arrangements of the Renaissance architect, that it is 
only in the early morning that some of the pictures can 
be seen at all, nor can they ever be secii but imper- 
fectly. They were all painted, however, for their places 
in the dark, and, as compared with Tintoret's other 
works, are therefore, for the most part, nothing more 
than vast sketches, made to produce, under a certain 
.degree of shadow, the effect of finished pictures. Their 
treatment is thus to be considered as a kind of scene- 
painting ; differing from ordinary scene-painting only 
in this, that the effect aimed at is not that of a 
natural scene but a 2mrfert picture. They differ in 
this respect from all other existing works ; for there is 
not, as far as I know, any other instance in which a 
great master has consented to work for a room plunged 
into almost total obscurity. It is probable that non^ but 
Tintoret would have undertaken the task, and most 
fortunate that he was forced to do it. For in this 
magnificent scene-painting we have, of course, more 
wonderful examples, both of his handling, and knowl- 
edge of eft'ect, than could ever have been exhibited in 
finished pictures ; while the necessity of doing much 
with few strokes keeps his mind so completely on the 
stretch throughout the work (while yet the velocity of 
production prevented his being wearied), that no other 
series of his works exhibits powers so exalted. On the 
other hand, owing to the velocity and coarseness of 
the painting, it is mo-.'e liable to injury thri)iigh drought 
or damp; and, as the walls have been for years con- 
tinually running down with rain, and what little sun 
gets into the place contrives to fall all day right on one 
or other of the pictures, they are nothing but wrecks of 
what they were ; and the ruins of paintings originally 
coarse are not likely ever to be attractive to the public 
mind. Twenty or thirty years ago they were taken 



102 .4 BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

down to be retouched ; but the man to whom the task 
was committed providentially died, and only one of 
them was spoiled. 1 have found traces of his work 
upon another, but not to an extent very seriously de- 
structive. The rest of the sixty-two, or, at any rate, all 
that are in the upper room, appear entirely intact. — 
/Stones of Venice, III., pp. 340, 341. 

Young Ruskin's first Visit to tiik Scuola di 
San Rocco in Venice. — When we came away, Hard- 
ing said that he felt like a whipped schoolboy. 1, not 
having been at school so long as he, felt only that anew 
world was opened to me, that I had seen that day the 
Art of Man in its full majesty for the first time ; and 
that there was also a strange and precious gift in my- 
self enabling me to recognize it, and therein ennobling, 
not crushing mo. — Modern Painters, II., p. 256, Ixe- 
msed Ed., 1883. 

Tintoret's Massacre of the Innocents. — The 
scene is the outer vestibule of a palace, the slippery 
marble floor is fearfully barred across by sanguine 
shadows, so that our eyes seem to become bloodshot 
and strained with strange horror and deadly vision ; a 
lake of life before them, hke the burning seen of the 
doomed Moabite on the water that came by the way 
of Edom ; a huge flight of stairs, without parapet, de- 
scends on the left; down this rush a crowd of women 
mixed with the murderers; the child in the arms of 
one has been seized by the limbs, she hurls herself over 
the edge, and fidls head down-most, dragging the child 
out of the grasp by her weight ; — she will be dashed 
dead in a second : two others are farther in flight, they 
reach the edge of a deep river — the water is beat into a 
hollow by the force of their plunge ; — close to us is the 
great struggle, a heap of the mothers entangled in one 
mortal writhe with each other and the swords, one of 
the murderers dashed down and crushed beneath them, 
the sword of another caught by the blade and dragged 
at by a woman's naked hand ; the youngest and fairest 
of the women, her child jnsr torn away from a death 
grasp and clasped to her breast with the grip of a steel 
vice, falls backwards helplessly over the heap, right on 
the sword points; all knit together and hurled down in 
one hopeless, frenzied, furious aliandonment of body 



THE GRAPHIC ARTS.— PAINTING. 103 

and soul in the effort to save. Their slirieksiinsj in our 
ears till the marble seems rending around us, but far 
back, at the bottom of the stairs, there is sometiiing in the 
shadow like a heap of clothes. It is a woman, sitting 
quiet — quite quiet — still as any stone, she looks down 
steadfastly on her dead child, hud along on the floor 
before her, and her hand is pressed softly upon her 
brow. — Modern Painters, II., p. 375. 

"The Last Judgment," ev Tintoret. — By Tin- 
toret only has this unmanageable event been grappled 
with in its verity, not typically nor symbolically, but 
as they may see it who shall not sleep, but be changed. 
Only one ti'aditional circumstance he has received with 
Dante and Michael Angelo, the boat of the condemned; 
but the impetuosity of his mind bursts out even in the 
adoption of this image, he has not stopped at the scowl- 
ing ferryman of the one nor at the sweeping blow and 
demon dragging of the other, but, seized Hylas-like by 
the limbs, and tearing up the earth in his agony, the 
victim is 'dashed into his destruction; nor is it the slug- 
gish Lethe, nor the fiery lake that bears the cursed 
vessel, but the oceans of the earth and the waters of 
the firmament gathered into one white, ghastly cataract, 
the river of the wrath of God, roaring down into the 
gulf where the world has melted with its fervent heat, 
choked with the ruin of nations, and the limbs of its 
corpses tossed out of its whirling, like water-wheels. 
Bat-like, out of the holes and caverns and shadows of 
the ear^h, the bones gather, and the clay-heaps heave, 
rattling and adhering into half-kneaded anatomies, that 
crawl, and startle, and struggle up among the putrid 
weeds, with the clay clinging to their clotted hair, and 
their heavy eyes sealed by the earth darkness yet, like 
his of old who went his way unseeing to Siloam Pool ; 
shaking off one by one the dreams of the prison-house, 
hardly hearing the clangor.of the trumpets of the armies 
of G(k1, blinded yet more, as they awake, by the white 
light of the new Heaven, until the great vortex of the 
four winds bears up their bodies to the judgment seat • 
the firmament is all full of them, a very dust of human 
souls, that drifts, and floats, and falls in the intermina' 
ble, inevitable light ; the bright clouds are darkened 
with them as witli thick snow, currents of atom life ia 



104 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOay. 

the arteries of heaven, now soaring up slowly, farther, 
and higher, and higher still, till the eye and the thought 
can follow no farther, borne up, wingless, by their in- 
ward faith and by the angel powers invisible, now 
hurled in countless drifts of horror before the breath of 
their condemnation. — Modern Pamters, II., p. 377. 

Veronese's Mastiffs. — Two mighty brindled mas- 
tiffs, and beyond them, darkness. You scarcely see 
them at first, against the gloomy green. No other sky 
for them, poor things. They are gray themselves, 
spotted witli black all over; their multitudinous dog- 
gish vices may not be washed out of them — are in 
grain of nature. Strong thewed and sinewed, how- 
ever — no blame on them as far as bodily strength may 
reach ; their heads coal-black, with drooping ears and 
fierce eyes, bloodshot a little. Wildest of beasts per- 
haps they would have been, by nature. But between 
them stands the spirit of their human Love, dove- 
winged and beautiful, the resistless Greek boy, golden- 
quivered ; his glowing breast and limbs the only light 
upon the sky — purple and pure. He has cast his chain 
about the dogs' necks, and holds it in his strong right 
hand, leaning proudly a little back from them. They 
will never break looje. — Modirii Pidnters,N ., p. 277. 

Venetian Art perished. — By reason of one great, 
one fatal fault; — recklessness in aim. Wholly noble 
in its sources, it was wholly unworthy in its purposes. . . 

The Assumption is a noble picture, because Titian 
believed in the Madonna. But he did not paint it to 
make anyone else believe in her. He painted it be- 
cause he enjoyed rich masses of red and blue, and faces 
flushed with sunlight. . . . 

Other men used their effete faiths and mean facul- 
ties with a high moral purpose. The Venetian gave 
the most earnest faith, and the lordliest faculty, to gild 
the shadows of an ante-chamber, or heighten the splen- 
dors of a holiday. 

I know not how far in humility, or how far in bitter 
and hopeless levity, the great V^enetians gave their art 
to be blasted by the sea-winds or Wcisted by the worm. 
I know not whether in sorrowful obedience, or in 
wanton compliance, they fostered the folly, and en- 



THE GRAPHIC ARTS.— PAINTING. 105 

riched the luxury of their age. This only I know, that 
in proportion to the greatness of their power was the 
shame of its desecration and the suddenness of its fall. 
The enchanter's spell, woven by centuries of toil, was 
broken in the weakness of a moment; and swiftly, and 
utterly, as a rainbow vanishes, the radiance and the 
strength faded from the wings of the Lion. — 3Ioder)i 
Painters, V., Part IX., chap. 3, i^'i-ssmi. 



THE DUTCH MASTERS. 

[From Modern Painters, V., Part IX., Chap. Xl.} 

No Religion in Dutch Art. — So far as I can hear 
or read, this is an entirely new and wonderful state of 
things achieved by the Hollanders. The human being 
never got wholly quit of the terror of spiritual being 
before. Persian, Egyptian, Assyrian, Hindoo, Chinese, 
all kept some dim, appalling record of what they 
called "gods." Farthest savages had — and still have — 
their Gieat Spirit, or, in extremity, their feather idols, 
large-eyed ; but here in Holland we have at la.-^t got 
utterly done with it all. Our only idol glitters dimly, 
in tangible shape of a pint pot, and all the incense offered 
thereto, comes out of a small censer or bowl at the end 
of a pipe, 

Paul Potter. — You will find that the best Dutch 
painters do not care about the people, but about the 
lustres on them. Paul Potter, their best herd and 
cattle painter, does not care even for sheep, but only 
for wool ; regards not cows, but cowhide. 

RrsKiN AND THE DiTCiiMEN. — No effort of faucy 
will enable me to lay hold of the temper of Teniers or 
Wouvermans, any more than I can enter into the feel- 
ings of one of the lower animals. I cannot see why 
they painted — what they are aim.ing at — what they 
liked or disliked. All their life and work is the same 
i-ort of mystery to me as the mind of my dog when he 
rolls on carrion. 

"Articles in Oil Paint.'" — A Dutch picture is, in 
fact, merely a Florentine table more finely touched : it 



106 A R US KIN A NTHOL OGY. 

has its regular ground of slate, and its mother-of-pearl 
and tinsel put in with equal precision ; and perhaps 
the fairest view one can take of a Dutch painter is, 
that he is a respectable tradesman furnishing well-made 
articles in oil paint. 

CuYP. — Cuyp can, indeed, paint sunlight, the best 
that Holland's sun can show ; he is a man of large natural 
gift, and sees broadly, nay, even seriously. A brewer 
by trade, he feels the quiet of a summer afternoon, and 
his work will make you marvelously drowsy. It is 
good for nothing else that I know of: strong; but un- 
helpful and unthoughtful. Nothing happens in his pic- 
tures, except some indifferent person's asking the way 
of somebody else, who, by their cast of countenance, 
seems not likely to know it. For farther entertain- 
ment perhaps a red cow and a white one ; or puppies at 
play, not playfully; the man's heart not going even with 
the puppies. Essentially he sees nothing but the shine 
on the flaps of their ears. 

Rubens. — Rubens was an honorable aild entirely 
well-intentioned man, earnestly industrious, sinnple and 
temperate in habits of life, high-bred, learned, and dis- 
creet. His affection for his mother w'as great ; his 
generosity to contemporary artists unfailing. He is a 
healthy, worthy, kind-hearted, courtly-phrased — Animal 
— without any clearly perceptible traces of a soul, except 
when he paints his children. 

Teniers. — Take a picture by Teniers, of so',s quar- 
relling over their dice : it is an entirely clever picture ; 
so clever that nothing in its kind has ever been done 
equal to it ; but it is also an entirel}'- base and evil 
picture. It is an expression of delight in the prolonged 
contemplation of a vile thing, and delight in that is an 
"unmannered," or "immoral" quality. — Crovyn of 
Wild Olive, Lect. I., p. 40. 



THE CLASSICAL SCHOOL. 

The Classical Spirit. — The school is generally to 
be characterized as that of taste and restraint. As the 
school of taste, everything is, in its estimation, beneath 



THE GRAPHIC ARTS.— PAINTING. 107 

it, so as to be tasted or tested ; not above it, to be 
thankfully received. Nothing was to be fed upon as 
bread; but only palated as a dainty. The spirit has 
destroyed art since the close of the sixteenth century, 
and nearly destroyed French literature, our English 
literature being at the same time severely depressed, 
and our education, (except in bodily strength) rendered 
nearly nugatory by it, so far as it affects common-place 
minds. It is not possible that the classical spirit should 
ever take possession of a mind of the highest order. 

Claude. — Claude had a fine feeling for beauty of 
form and considerable tenderness of perception. . . , 
He first set the pictorial sun in the pictorial heaven. . . 
His aerial effects are unequalled. Their character ap- 
pears to me to arise rather from a delicacy of bodily 
constitution in Claude, than from any mental sensibil- 
ity ; such as they are, they give a kind of feminine 
charm to his work, which partly accounts for its wide 
influence. To whatever the character may be traced, 
it renders hiua incapable of enjoying or painting any- 
thing energetic or terrible. Hence the weakness of his 
conceptions of rough sea. . . . 

He had sincerity of purpose. That is to say, so far 
as he felt the truth, he tried to be true ; but he never 
felt it enough to sacrifice sujjposed propriety, or habit- 
ual method to it. . . . His seas are the most beautiful 
in old art. . . . He had hardly any knowledge of 
})hysical science. There is no other sentiment traceable 
in his work than this weak dislike to entertain the con- 
ception of toil or suffering. Ideas of relation, in the 
true sense, he has none ; nor ever makes an effort to 
conceive an event in its probable circumstances, but 
fills his foregrounds with decorative figures, using com- 
monest conventionalism to indicate the subject he in- 
tends. We may take two examples, merely to show 
the general character of such designs of his. 

St. George and the Dragon. The scene is a beauti- 
ful opening in woods by a river side, a pleasant foun- 
tain springs on the right, and the usual rich vegetation 
covers the foreground. The dragon is about the size 
of ten bramble leaves, and is being killed by the re- 
mains of a lance, barely the thickness t)f a walking- 
stick, in his throat, curling his tail in a highly offensive 



108 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

and threatening manner. St. George, notwitlistandin^^, 
on a prancing horse, bi-andishes his sword, at about 
thirty yards' distance from the offensive animal. 

A semicircuh^r shelf of rocks encircles the foneground, 
by which the theatre of action is divided into pit and 
boxes. Some women and children having descended 
unadvisedly into the pit, are helping each other out of 
it again, with marked precipitation. A prudent per- 
son of rank has taken a front seat in the boxes — crosses 
his legs, leans his head on his hand, and contemplates 
the proceedings with the air of a connoisseur. Two 
attendants stand in graceful attitudes behind him, and 
two more walk away under the trees, conversing on 
general subjects. 

Large admiration of Claude is wholly impossible in 
any period of national vigor in art. He may by such 
tenderness as he possesses, and by the very fact of his 
banishing painfulness, exercise considerable influence 
over certain classes of minds ; but this influence is al- 
most exclusively hurtful to them. 

Nevertheless, on account of such small sterling quali- 
ties as they possess, and of their general pleasantness, 
as well as their importance in the history of art, genu- 
ine Claudes must always possess a considerable value, 
either as drawing-room ornaments or museum relics. 
They may be ranked with fine pieces of China manu- 
facture, and other agreeable curiosities, of which the 
price depends on the rarity rather than the merit, yet 
always on a merit of a certain low kind — Modern, 
Painters, V,, pp. 263-2G9. 

NicoLO PoussiN. — Poussin's landscapes, though 
more limited in material, are incomparably nobler than 
Claude's. It would take considerable time to enter into 
accurate analysis of his strong but degraded mind ; and 
bring us no reward, because whatever he has done has 
been done better by Titian. His peculiarities are, 
without exception, weaknesses, induced in a highly in- 
tellectual and inventive mind by Iteing fed on medals, 
books, and bassi-relievi instead of nature, and by the 
want of any deep sensibility. His best works are his 
Bacchanalian revels, always brightly wanton and wild, 
full of frisk and fire ; but they are coarser than Titian's, 
and infinitely less beautiful. ... 



THE 'ORAPHIC ARTS.— PAINTING. 109 

His want of sensibility permits liim to paint frightful 
subjects, without feeling any true horror. . . . 

His battle pieces are cold and feeble ; his religious 
subjects wholly nugatory, they do not excite him 
enough to develop even his ordinary powers of rnvQW- 
iionZ-Modern rainters, V., pp. 2()3-2Tl. 



LANDSCAPE. 

Education amidst country possessing architectural re- 
mains of some noble kind, I believe to be wholly essen- 
tial to tlie progress of a landscape artist. — Modern 
rainters, V., p. 322. 

Tlie first man who entirely broke through the con- 
ventionahty of his time, and painted pure landscape, was 
Masaccio, but he died too young to effect the revolu- 
tion of winch his genius was capable. It was left for 
other men to accomplish, namely, for Correggio and 
Titian. These two painters were the first who relieved 
che foregrounds of their landscape from the grotesque, 
j^uaint, and crowded formalism of the early painters ; 
and gave a close approximation to the forms of nature 
in £ i\\\-ng^.— Lectures on Architecture, p. 88. 

Human Interest in Landscape. — All true land- 
scape, whether simple or exalted, depends primarily for 
its interest on connection with humanity, or with spirit- 
ual powers. Banisli your heroes and nymphs from the 
classical landscape— its laurel shades will move you no 
more. Show that the dark clefts of the most romantic 
mountain are uninhabited and untraversed ; it will 
cease to be romantic. ... If from Veronese's Mar- 
i-iage in Cana we remove the architecture and the gay 
dre^sses, we shall not in the faces and hands remaining, 
find a satisfactory abstract of the picture. But try it 
the other way. Take out the faces ; leave the draperies, 
and how then \ Put the fine dresses and jewelled gir- 
dles into the best group you can ; paint them with all 
Veronese's skill: will they satisfy you ?— J/o(/t^;7i 
Pcmiters, V., p. 21G. 

A Modern French Emotional Landscape. — You 
may paint a modern French emotional landscape with 



110 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

a pail of whitewash and a pot of gas-tar in ten minutes, 
at the outside. You put seven or eight streaks of the 
plaster for your sky, to begin with; then you put in a 
i-ow of bushes with the gas-tar, then you rub the ends 
of them into the same shapes upside down — you put 
three or four more streaks of white, to intimate tlie 
presence of a pool of water — and if you finish off with a 
log that looks something like a dead body, your picture 
will have the credit of being a di";est of a whole novel 
of Gaboriau, and lead the talk of the season. — Art of 
Englcmd, p. 90. 

In Miss Greena way's Child-Land. — There are no 
railroads in it, to carry the children away with, are 
there? no tunnel or pit mouths to swallow them up, no 
league-long viaducts — no blinkered iron bridges 1 There 
are only wiiiding brooks, wooden foot-bridges, and 
grassy hills without any holes cut into them ! 

Again — there are no parks, no gentlemen's seats 
with attached stables and offices ! — no rows of model 
lodging-houses! no charitable institutions! ! It seems 
as if none of these things which the English mind now 
rages after, possess any attraction whatever for this 
unimpressionable person. She is a graceful Gallio — 
Gallia gratia plena, and cares for none of those things. 

And more wonderful still — there are no gasworks ! 
no waterworks, no mowing machines, no sewing ma- 
chines, no telegraph poles, no vestige, in fact, of science, 
civilization, economical arrangements, or commei'cial 
enterprise! ! ! — Art of En f /land, pp. 68, 69. 

The Native Country of Salvator. — We are ac- 
customed to hear the south of Italy spoken of as a 
beautiful country. Its mountain forms are graceful 
above others, its sea-bays exquisite in outline and hue ; 
but it is only beautiful in superficial aspect. In closer 
detail it is wild and melancholy. Its forests are sombre- 
leafed, labyrinth-stemmed; the carubbe, the olive, lau- 
rel, and ilex, are alike in that strange feverish twist- 
ing of their branches, as if in spasms of half human 
pain : — Avernus forests ; one fears to break their 
boughs, lest they should cry to us from their rents ; 
the rocks they shade are of ashes, or thrice-molten 
lava; iron sponge, whose every pore has been filled 



THE GUAPlUa ARTS.— PAINTING. Ill 

with fire. Silent villages, earthquake-shaken, without 
commerce, without industry, without knowledge, with- 
out hope, gleam in white ruin from hillside to hillside ; 
far-winding wrecks of immemorial walls surround the 
dust of cities long forsaken: the mountain streams 
moan through the cold arches of their foundations, 
green with weed, and rage over the heaps of their fallen 
towers. Far above, in thunder-blue serration, stand the 
eternal edges of the angry Apennine, dark with rolling 
iiupendence of volcanic cloud. — Modern Painters, V., 
p. 257. 

Salvator had not the sacred sense — the sense of 
color; all the loveliest hues of the Calabrian air were 
invisible to him; the sorrowful desolation of the Cala- 
brian villages unfelt. He saw only what was gross 
and terrible — the jagged peak, the splintered tree, the 
flowerless bank of grass, and wandering weed, prickly 
and pale. His temper confirmed itself in evil, and 
became more and more fierce and morose ; though not, 
I believe, cruel, ungenerous, or lascivious. — Modern 
Painters, V., p. 258. 



TURNER. 

Turner painted the labor of men, their sorrow, and 
their death ; . . . [he] only momentarily dwells on 
anything els(i than ruin. — Modern Painters, V., pp. 
356, 357. 

Turner appears never to have desired, from any one, 
.care in favor of his separate works. The only thing he 
would say sometimes was, " Keep them together." He 
seemed not to mind how much they were injured, if 
only the record of the thought were left in them, and 
they were kept in the series which would give the key to 
their meaning. — .Modern Painters, V., p. 359. 

Turner may be beaten on his own ground — so may 
Tintoret, so may Shakespeare, Dante, or Homer : but 
my heliefia that all these first-rate men are lonely men ,• 
that the pai-ticular work they did was by them done 
for ever in the best way ; and that this work done by 
Turner among the hills, joining the most intense appre- 



112 A RUSK JN ANTHOLOGY. 

ciation of all tenderness with delight in all magnitude, 
and memory for all detail, is never to be rivalled, or 
looked upon in similitude again. — Modern Pidnfers, 
IV., p. 322. 

A single dusty roll of Turner's brush is more truly 
expressive of the infinitude of foliage than the niggling 
of Hobima could have rendered his canvas, if he had 
worked on it till doomsday. . . . 

He could not paint a cluster of leaves better than 
Titian ; but he could a bough, much more a distant mass 
of foliage. No man ever before painted a distant tree 
rightly, or a full-leaved branch rightly. All Titian's 
distant branches are ponderous flakes, as if covered 
with sea-weed, while Veronese's and Raphael's are con- 
ventional, being exquisitely ornamental arrangements of 
small perfect leaves. — Modern Painters, V., p. 52. 

Turner's Opinion of Skies. — He knew the colors 
of the clouds over the sea, from the Bay of Naples to 
the Hebrides; and- being once asked where, in Europe, 
were to be seen the loveliest skies, answered instantly, 
"in the Isle of Tlianet." Where, therefore, and in 
this very town of Margate, he lived, when he chose to 
be quit of London, and yet not to travel. — Fors, I., 
p. 128. 

Turner and ixis Opponents. — They had deliberately 
closed their eyes to all nature, and had gone on inquir- 
ing, " Where do you put your brown tree ? " A vast 
revelation was made to them at once [by Turner's 
color style], enough to have dazzled any one; but to 
them, light unendurable as incomprehensible. They 
"did to the moon complain," in one vociferous, unani-' 
mous, continuous " Tu whoo." Shrieking rose from all 
dark places at the same instant, just the same kind of 
shrieking that is now raised against thePre-Raphaelites. 
Those glorious old Arabian Nights, how true they are ! 
Mocking and whispering, and abuse loud and low 
by turns, from all the black stones beside the road, when 
one living soul is toiling up the hill to get the golden 
water. Mocking and whispering, that he may look 
back, and become a black stone like themselves. — Pre- 
llcqjhaelitism, p. 39. 



THE GRAPHIC ARTS.— PAINTING. 113 

The Port-holes of the Ship. — Turner, in his early 
life, was sometimes good-natured, and would show peo- 
ple what he was about. He was one day making a 
drawing of Plymouth harbor, v/ith some ships at the 
distance of a mile or two, seen against the light. Hav- 
ing shown this drawing to a naral officer, the naval 
officer observed with surprise, and objected with very 
justifiable indignation, that the ships of the line had nc 
port-holes. "No," said Turner, " certainly not. If yoi' 
will walk up to Mount Edgecumbe, and look at th** 
ships against the sunset, you will find you can't see th? 
port-holes." "Well, but," said the naval officer, stiP 
indignant, "you know the port-holes are there." " Yes,'' 
said Turner, " I know that well enough ; but my busi- 
ness is to draw what I see, and not what I know ii/ 
there :'— Eagles JVc^f, p. 81. 

Each Work must be studied Separately. — Two 
works of his, side by side, destroy each other to a dead 
certainty, for each is so vast, so complete, so demand- 
ant of every power, so sufficient for every desire of the 
mind, that it is utterly impos?ible for two to be compre- 
hended together. Each must have the undivided in- 
tellect, and each is destroyed by the attraction of the 
other; and it is the chief power and might of these 
pictures, that they are works for the closet and the 
heart — works to be dwelt upon separately and devotedly, 
and then chiefly when the mind is in it ^ highest tone, 
and desirous of a beauty which may be food for its 
immortality. It is the very stamp and essence of the 
purest poetry, that it can only be so met and under- 
stood ; and that the clash of common interests, and the 
roar of the selfish world, must be hushed about the 
heart, before it can hear the still, small voice, wherein 
rests the power communicated from the Holiest. — 
Arroics of the CJutce, I., p. 35. 

Various Judgments and Anecdotes of Turner. — 
Turner differed from most men in this — that he was 
always willing to take anything to do that came in lii^s 
way. He did not shut himself up in a garret to pro- 
duce unsaleable works of " high art," and starve, or lose 
his senses. He hired himself out every evening to 
wash in skies in Imlian ink, on other people's drawings, 



114 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

as many as he could, at half-a-crown a-night, getting 
his supper into the bargain. " What could 1 have done 
better?" he said afterwards: "it was first-rate prac- 
tice." 

There does not exist such a thing as a slovenly draw- 
ing by Turner. . . . He never let a drawing leave 
his hands without having made a step in advance, and 
having done better in it than he had ever done before ; 
and there is no important drawing of the period which 
is not executed with a ^Jc/^/^dif^regard of time and price, 
and which was not, even then, worth four or five times 
what Turner received for it. . . . 

What Turner did in contest with Claude, he did with 
every other then-known master of landscape, each in 
his turn. He challenged and vanquished, each in his 
own peculiar field, Vandevelde on the sea, Salvator 
among rocks, and Cuyp on lowland rivers ; and, having 
done this, set himself to paint the natural scenery of 
skies, mountains, and lakes, which, until his time, had 
never been so much as attempted. 

He thus, in the extent of his sphere, far surpassed 
even Titian and Leonardo, the great men of the earlier 
schools. In their foreground work neither Titian nor 
Leonardo could be excelled ; but Titian and Leonardo 
were thoroughly conventional in all hut their fore- 
gi'ounds. Turner was equally great in all the elements 
of landscape, and it is on him, and on his daring addi- 
tions to the received schemes of landscape art, that all 
modern landscape has been founded. You will never 
meet any truly great living landscape painter who will 
not at once frankly confess his obligations to Turner, 
not, observe, as having copied him, but as having been 
led by Turner to look in nature for what he would 
otherwise either not have discerned, or discerning, not 
have dared to represent. 

Turner, therefore, was the first man who presented 
us with the t[/pe of perfect landscape art : and the 
richness of that art, with which you are at present sur- 
rounded, and which enables you to open your walls as 
it were into so many windows, through which you can 
see whatever has charmed you in the fairest scenery of 
your country, you will do well to remember as Tur- 
nercsqxe. . . . 



THE GRAPHIC ARTS.— PAINTING. 115 

This man, this Turner, of whom you have known so 
little while he was living among you, will one day take 
his place beside Shakespeare and Verulam, in the an- 
nals of the light of England. 

Yes : beside Shakespeare and Yerulam, a third star 
in that central constellation, round which, in the astron- 
omy of intellect, all other stars make their circuit. By 
Shakespeare, humanity was unsealed to you ; by Veru- 
lam the princijyles of nature ; and by Turner, her 
aspect. ... 

I knew him for ten years, and during that time had 
much familiar intercourse with him. I never once 
heard him say an unkind thing of a brother artist, / 
iievev. once heard liiin fnd a fault with another 
man's work. I could say this of no other artist whom 
I have ever known. . . . 

When Turner's picture of Cologne was exhibited in 
the vear 1826, it was hung between two portraits, by 
Sir Thomas Lawrence, of Lady Wallscoui t, and Lady 
Robert Manners. 

The sky of Turner's picture was exceedingly bright, 
and it had a most injurious effect on the color of the 
two portraits. Lawrence naturally felt mortified, and 
complained openly of the position of his pictures. You 
are aware that artists were at that time permitted to 
retouch their pictures on the walls of the Academy. 
On the morning of the opening of the exhibition, at the 
private view, a friend of Turner's who had seen the 
Cologne in all its splendor, led a group of expectant 
critics up to the picture. He started back from it in 
consternation. The golden sky had changed to a dun 
color. He ran up to Turner, who was in another part 
of the room. " Turner, what have you been doing to 
your picture?" "Oh," muttered Turner, in a low 
voice, "poor Lawrence was so unhappy. It's only 
lamp black. It'll all wash off after the exhibition ! " 
He had actually passed a wash of lamp black in water- 
color over the whole sky, and utterly spoiled his picture 
for the time, and so left it through the exhibition, lest 
it should hurt Lawrence's. 

Imagine what it was for a man to live seventy years 
in this hard world, with the kindest heart and the 
noblest intellect of his time, and never to meet with a 



116 A R USKIN ANTHOLOG F. 

single word or ray of sympathy, until he felt himself 
sinking into the grave. From the time he knew his 
ti'ue greatness all the world was turned against him : 
he held his own ; but it could not be without roughness 
of bearing, and hardening of the temper, if not of the 
heart. No one understood him, no one trusted him, 
and every one cried out against him. Imagine, any of 
you, the effect upon your own minds, if every voice 
that you heard from the human beings around you 
were raised, year after year, through all your lives, 
only in condemnation of your efforts, and denial of 
your success. — Lectures on ArcJiitecture, III., pp. 
95-103. 

Emerson and Turner. — No modern person has 
truer instinct for heroism than [Mr. Emerson]: nay, he 
is the only man I know of, among all who ever looked 
at books of mine, who had nobleness enough to under- 
stand and believe the story of Turner's darkening his 
own picture that it might not take the light out of 
Lawrence's. The level of vulgar English temper is 
now sunk so far below the power of doing such a thing, 
that I never told the story yet, in general society, with- 
out being met by instant and obstinate questioning of 
its truth, if not by quiet incredulity. But men with 
"the pride of the best blood of England" can believe 
it ; and Mr. Emerson believes it. — Fors, I., p. 365. 

Turner's Kindness. — One of the points in Turner 
which increased the general falseness of impression 
respecting him was a curious dishke he had to appear 
kind. Drawing, with one of his best friends, at the 
bridge of St. Martin's, the friend got into great difficul- 
ty over a colored sketch. Turner looked over him a 
little while, then said, in a grumbling way — "I haven't 
got any paper I like ; let me try yours." Receiving a 
block book, he disappeared for an hour and a half. 
Returning, he threw the book down, with a growl, say- 
ing — " I can't make anything of your paper." There 
were three sketches on it, in throe distinct states of 
progress, showing the process of coloring from begin- 
ning to end, and clearing up every difficulty which his 
friend had got into. — 3Iodern Painters, V., p. 369. 



THE ORAPIUV AUTS.— PAINTING. 117 

This one fact I now record joyfully and solsmnly, 
that, having known Turner for ten years, and tliat dur- 
\\v^ the period of his life when the briglitest qualities of 
his mind were, in many respects, diminished, and when 
he was suffering most from the evil speaking of the 
world, I never heard him say one depreciating word of 
living man, or man's woi'k ; I never saw him look an 
unkind or blameful look; I never knew him let pass, 
without some sorrowful remonstrance, or endeaver a* 
mitigation, a blameful word spoken by another. — 
Modern Pahiters, V., p. (3(j(J. 



TURNER AND THE SPLUGEN DRAWING 

[Shortly after his recovery from the most serious 
illness of his life, in the Spring of 187S, Professor 
Riiskin was presented, by his friends with Turner's 
"Pass of the Spliigen," a drawing which he had cov- 
eted for years, and Vv^hich he says has mainly directed 
all his practical study of mountain forms, and all his 
geological researches. The drawing was purchased at 
the Novar sale, the idea of the presentation having 
been taken from Professor Ruskin's Notes on his 
Turner Drawings, wherein lie gave a graphic and 
sprightly report of the origin of the "Spliigen," and 
his own share in getting Turner the commission. 

In 1840-41 Turner had been in Switzerland making 
sketches, and in the winter of 1841-42, having re- 
turned to London, he went to picture dealer -Griffith, 
with fifteen of these, and left them with him, offering 
to realize ten if buyers could be found. He also took 
to Griffith four realized sketches in order to show his 
hand. Let Professor Ruskin continue the story] : 

So he went to Mr. Griffith of Norwood. I loved — 
yes, loved, Mr. Griffith; and the happy hours he got 
for me! (I was introduced to Turner on Mr. Griffith's 
garden-lawn.) He was the only person whom Turner 
minded at that time. But my father could not bear 
him. So there were times, and times. • 

One day, then, early in 1842, Turner brought the 
four [sign] drawings above-named, [The Pass of the 
Spliigen, Mont Righi (morning), Mont Righi (evening), 



118 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

and Lake Lucerne] and the fifteen sketches in a roll in 
his pocket, to Mr. Griffith (in Waterloo Place, where 
the sale-room was). 

I have no reason to doubt the substantial accuracy 
of Mr. Griffith's report of the first conversation. Says 
Mr. Turner to Mr. Griffith, " What do you think you 
can get for sucii things as these ? " 

Says Mr. Griffith 'to Mr. Turner: " Well, perhaps, 
commission included, eighty guineas each." 

Says Mr. Turner to Mr. Griffith, "Ain't they 
worth more?" 

Says Mr. Griffith to Mr. Turner, (after looking 
curiously into the execution, whichj you will please 
note, is rather what some people would call hazy) : 
" They 're a little diii'erent from your usual style" — 
(Turner silent, Griffith does not push the point) — "but 
— but — yes, they are worth more, but I could not get 
more." (Question of intrinsic value, and political 
economy in Art, you see, early forced on my attention). 

So the bargain was made that if Mr. Griffith could 
sell ten drawings — the four signs [or specimens] to 
wit, and six others — for eighty guineas each. Turner 
would make the six others from such of the fifteen 
sketches as the purchasers chose, and Griffith should 
have ten per cent, (mt of the eight hundred total (Tur- 
ner had expected a thousand, I believe). 

So then Mr. Griffith thinks over the likely persons 
to get commissions from, out of all England, for ten 
drawings by Turner ! and these not quite in his usual 
style, too, and he sixty-five years old ; — reputation also 
pretty nearly overthrown finally, by lilackirooirs 
MiKjdzhto ; — a hard thing enough ; but the old man 
must be pleased, if possible! So Griffith did his best. 

He sent to Mr. Munro of Novar, Turner's old com- 
panion in travel ; he sent to Mr. Windus of Totten- 
ham; he sent to Mr. Bicknell of Heme Hill ; he sent 
to my fatlier and me. 

Mr. Windus of Tottenham came first, and at once 
said "the style was changed, he did not quite like it." 
(He was right, mind you, he knew his Turner, in style). 
" He would not have any of these drawings." I, as 
Fors would have it, came next; but my father was 
travelling for orders, and I had no authority to do any- 



THE GRAPHIC ARTS.— PAINTING. 119 

thing. The Spliigen Pass I saw in an instant to be the 
noblest Alpine drawing Turner had ever till then made ; 
and the red Righi, such a piece of color as had never 
come nil/ way before. I wrote to my father, saying I 
would fain have that Spliigen Pass, if he were home in 
time to see it, and give me leave. Of more than one 
drawing I had no hope, for my father knew the worth 
of ei'ditv jj; nine as. 

[After some talk and bargaining two of the sketches 
got ordered and three of the finished drawings were 
purchased]. " And not tliat^'' said Turner, shaking 
his fist at the Pass of the Spliigen ; — but said no more ! 

I came and saw the Pass of the Spliigen again, and 
heard how things were going on, and I knew well why 
Turner had said, " And not that." 

The next day Munro of Novar came again ; and he 
also knew why Turner had said " not that," and made 
up his mind; and bought the Pass of the Spliigen. 

At last my father came home. I had not the way 
of explaining my feelings to him somehow, any more 
than Cordelia to her father ; nevertheless, he knew 
them enough to say I might have one of the sketches 
realized. He went with me, and chose with me, to 
such end, the original of the Ehrenbreitstein. 

[By hard coaxing, John got his father to promise 
him one more drawing; on condition that it turned out 
well. Turner set to work on nine pictures and finished 
them. John's conditional " Lucerne" turned out well, 
and was purchased by the indulgent father]. 

Four or five years ago — [continues Mr. Ruskin] Mr. 
Vokins knows when, I haven't the date handy here — he 
came out to me, saying he wanted a first- rate Turner 
drawing, had I one to spare? 

" Well," I said, " I have none to spare, yet I have a 
reason for letting one first-rate one go, if you give me 
a price." 

" What will you take % " 

"A thousand pounds." 

Mr. Vokins wrote me the cheque in Denmark Hill 
drawing-room (my old servant, Lucy Tovey, bringing 
pen and ink), and took the Lucerne. Lucy, amazed 
and sorrowful, put the drawing into his carriage. 

I wished to get (had Turner, for one drawing, his 



120 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

own original price for the whole ten, and thus did. — ' 
Notes on his Turner Drawings — Epilogue, pp. 
71-75. 

Turner Unappreciated by the Public. — I spent 
the ten strongest years of my life (from twenty to 
thirty), in endeavoring to show the excellence of the 
work of the man whom I believed, and rightly believed, 
to be the greatest painter of the schools of England 
since Reynolds. I had then perfect faith in the power 
of every great truth or beauty to prevail vUtimately,and 
take its right place in usefulness and honor ; and 1 
strove to bring the painter's work into this due place, 
while the painter was yet alive. But he knew, better 
than I, the uselessness of talking about what people 
could not see for themselves. He always discouraged 
me scornfully, even when he thanked me — and he died 
before even the superficial effect of my work was visi- 
ble. I went on, however, thinking I could at least be of 
use to the public, if not to him, in proving his power. 
My books got talked about a little. The prices of mod- 
ern pictures, generally, rose, and I was beginning to take 
some pleasure in a sense of gradual victory, when, for- 
tunately or unfortunately, an opportunity of perfect 
trial undeceived me at once, and for ever. The Trustees 
of the National Gallery commissioned me to arrange 
the Turner drawings there, and permitted me to prepare 
three hundred examples of his studies from nature, for 
exhibition at Kensington. At Kensington they were 
and are placed for exhibition ; but they are not ex 
hibited, f.^r the room in which they hang is always 
empty. — The Mystery of Life, p. 105. 

" The Rest is Silence," — The account of gain and 
loss, of gifts and gratitude, between Turner and his 
countrymen, was for ever closed. lie could only be 
left to his quiet death at Chelsea — the sun upon his 
face ; they to dispose a length of funeral through Lud- 
gate, and bury, with threefold honor, his body in St. 
Paul's, his pictures at Charing Cross, and his purposes 
in Chancery. — Modern Painters, III., p. 7. 

Turner's "Slave Ship." — I think the noblest sea 
that Turner has ever painted, and if so, the noblest 
certainly ever painted by man, is that of the Slave 



THE GRAPHIC ARIK-PAINTING. 1?1 

Ship, the chief Academy picture of the ExhibitiDii of 
18-iO. It is a sunset on the Atlantic, after prolonged 
storni ; but the storm is partially lulled, and the torn 
and streaming rain-clouds are moving in scarlet lines to 
lose themselv'es in the hollow of the night. The whole 
surface of sea included in the picture is divided into 
two ridges of enormous swell, not high nor local, but a 
low, broad heaving of the whole ocean, hke the lifting 
of its bosom by deep-drawn breath after the torture of 
the storm. Between tliese two ridges the fire of the 
.sunset fails along the trough of the sea, dyeing it with 
an awful but glorious light— the intense and lurid 
splendor which burns like gold and bathes like blood. 
Along this fiery path and valley, the tossing waves by 
which the swell of the sea is restlessly divided lift 
themselves in dark, indefinite, fantastic forms, each 
casting a faint and ghastly shadow behind it along the 
illumined foam. They do not rise everywhere, but 
three or four together in wild groups, fitfully and fu- 
riously, as the linder-strength of the swell compels or 
permits them, leaciiig between them treacherous spaces 
of level and whirling water, now lighted with green and 
lamp-like fire, now tiashing back the gold of the declin- 
inii sun, now fearfully dyed from above with theundis- 
tinguishable images of the burning clouds, which fall 
upon them in fiakes of crimson and scarlet, and give to 
tlie reckless waves the added motion of tlieir own fiery 
flying. Purple and blue, the lurid shadows of the hol- 
low breakers are cast upon the mist of the night, which 
leathers cold and low, advancing like the shadow of 
death upon the guilty* ship as it labors amidst the 
lightning of the sea, its thin masts written upon the sky 
in lines of blood, girded with condemnation in that fear- 
ful hue which signs the sky with horror and mixes its 
naming flood with the sunlight, and, cast far along the 
desolate heave of the sepulchral waves, incarnadines 
tlie multitudinous sea. 

I believe if I were reduced to rest Turner's immor- 
tality upon any single work, I should choose this. Its 
daring conception, ideal in the highest sense of the 
word, is based on the purest truth, and wrought out 

* She is a Slaver, throwing her slaves overboard. The near sea is 
encumbered with corpses. 



122 A RVSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

with the concentrated knowledge of a life ; its color is 
absolutely perfect, not one false or morbid hue in any 
part or line, and so modulated that every square inch of 
canvas is a perfect composition ; its drawing as accu- 
rate as fearless; the ship buoyant, bending, and full of 
motion ; its tones as true as they are wonderful ; and 
the whole picture dedicated to the most sublime of 
subjects and impressions (completing thus the perfect 
system of all truth, which we have shown to be formed 
by Turner's works) — the power, majesty, and death- 
fulness of the open, deep, illimitable sea. — Moden 
Painters, II., p. 140. 

[In the University Magazine for May, 1878, Mr 
W. H. Harrison, the friend and literary counsellor o/ 
Ruskin in his boyhood, gives a whimsical anecdote o 
Turner. He say.s: — 

" I used to meet Turner at the table of Mr. Ruskin 
ihe father of the art critic. The first occasion was s 
("ew days after the appearance of a notice in the 
At/iencBum, of a picture of Turner's, which was there- 
m characterized as 'Eggs and Spinach.' This stuck 
in the great painter's throat, and as we were returning 
together, ia Mr. Ruskin's carriage. Turner ejaculated 
the obnoxious phrase every five minutes. I told him 
that if i had attained to his' eminence in art, I should 
not care a rush for what anyone siid of me. But the 
only reply 1 could get was 'Eggs and Spinach.'" 

The best Life of Turner is by Walter Thornbury. — 
On Epochs in his Art Life consult the Introduction 
(pp. 7-9) to "Notes by Mr. Ruskin on his Drawings, 
the Late J. M. W. Turner;" also "Modern Painters," 
I., pp. 190-201), and ■' Pre-Raphaelitism," pp. 28-48. 
Chapter VIII. of ihe " Laws of Fcsol?," describes 
Turner's method of laying his colors. Mr. Ruskin 'has 
had made by his draughtsman, Mr. Wm. Ward, fac- 
simile copies of Turner's paintings which he thinks 
nearly equiil to the originals. They are for sale by 
Mr, Ward at 2 Church Terrace, Richmond, Surrey]. 



THE GRAPHIC ARTS.— PAINTING. 133 



COLOR. 

Color is the type of love. — Modern Painters, V., 
p. 342. 

Color, generally, but chiefly the scarlet, used with the 
hyssop, in the Levitical law, is the great sanctifying 
element of visible beauty inseparably connected with 
purity and life. — Modern. Painters, V., p. 341. 

The Loveliest Colors. — The loveliest colors ever 
granted to human sight — those of morning and even- 
ing clouds before or after rain — are produced on mi- 
nute particles of finely-divided water, or perhaps some- 
times, ice. 

There are no colors, either in the nacre of shells, or 
the plumes of birds and insects, which are so pure as 
those of clouds, opal, or flowers. 

No diamond shows color so pure as a dewdrop. — 
Jjectiires on Art, p. 110. 

To color perfectly is the rarest and most precious 
(technical) power an artist can possess. There have 
been only seven supreme colorists among the true 
painters whose works exist (namely, Giorgione, Titian, 
Veronese, Tintoret, Correggio, Reynolds, and Turner) ; 
but the names of great designers, including sculptors, 
architects, and metal-workers are multitudinous. — 
Modern Painters, V., p. 342. 

Form before Color. — Abstract color is of far 
less importance than abstract form ; that is to say, if 
it could rest in our choice whether we would carve like 
Phidias (supposing Phidias had never used color), or 
arrange the colors of a shawl like Indians, there is no 
question as to which power we ought to choose. The 
difference of rank is vast ; there is no way of estimat- 
ing or measuring it. — Modern Painters, V., p. 341. 

Color and Form. — The man who can see all the 
grays, and reds, and purples in a peach, will paint the 
peach rightly round, and rightly altogether ; but the 
man who has only studied its roundness, may not see 
its purples and grays, and if he does not, will never 
get it to look like a peach ; so that great power over 



124 A Ji'i^i^l'^LS AXTHOLOGY. 

color is alwtiys a sign of large general art-intellect. . . . 
To color well requires real talent and earnest study, 
and to color perfectly is the rarest and most precious 
power an artist can possess. — 3Iodern Painters, IV., 
p. 07. 

The Interdependence of Colors. — In giving an ac- 
count of anything for its own sake, the most important 
points are those of form. Nevertheless, the form of 
the object is its owa attribute; special, not shared 
with other things. An error in giving an account of 
it does not necessarily involve wider error. But its 
color is partly its own, partly shared with other things 
round it. The hue and power of all broad sunlight is 
involved in the color it has cast upon this single thing; 
to falsify that color, is to misrepresent and break the 
harmony of the day : also, by what color it bears, this 
single object is altering hues all round it ; reflecting its 
own into them, displaymg them by opposition, softening 
them by repetition ; one falsehood in color in one place, 
implies a thousand in the neighborhood. Hence, there 
are peculiar penalties attached to falsehood in color, 
and peculiar rewards granted to veracity in it. — 
Modern Pttiiitcn^, V., p. 345. 

The Saoredness of Color. — The fact is, we none 
of us enough appreciate the nobleness and sacredness of 
color. Nothing is more common than to hear it spoken 
of as a subordinate beauty — nay, even as the mere 
source of a sensual pleasure ; and we might almost be- 
lieve that we were daily among men who 

" Could strip, for aught the prospect yields 
To them, their verdure from the fields ; 
And take the radiance from the clouds 
With which the sun his setting shrouds." 

But it is not so. Such expressions are used for the 
most part in thoughtlessness ; and if the speakers would 
only take the pains to imagine what the world and their 
own existence would become, if the blue were taken 
from the sky, and the gold from the sunshine, and the 
verdure from the leaves, and the crimson from the 
blood which is the life of man, the flush from the cheek, 
the darkness from the eye, the radiance from the hair — 
if they could but see for an instant, white human crea- 



THE ORAFHIC ARTS.— FAINTING. 125 

tures living in a white world — they would soon feel 
what they owe to color. The fact is, that, of all God"s 
gifts to the sight of man, color is the lioliest, the most 
divine, the most solemn. We speak rashly of gay color, 
and sad color, for color cannot at once be good and 
gay. All good color is in some degree pensive, the love- 
liest is melancholy, and the purest and most thoughtful 
minds are those which love color the most. — Stones vj 
Venice, II., p. 145. 

Chiaroscuro and Color Incompatible. — In our 
modern art we have indeed lost sight of one great 
principle which regulated that of the Middle Ages, 
namely, that chiaroscuro and color are incompatible in 
their highest degrees. Wherever chiaroscuro enters, 
color must lose some of its brilliancy. There is no 
shade m a rainbow, nor in an opal, nor in a piece of 
mother-of-pearl, nor in a well-designed painted window; 
only various hues of perfect color. — Giotto and Ills 
Works, p. 20. 

Colors Wet. — Every color, wet, is twice as brilliant 
as it is when dry ; and when distances are obscui'ed by 
mist, and bright colors vanish from the sky, and gleams 
of sunshine from the earth, the foreground assumes all 
its loveliest hues, the grass and foliage revive into their 
perfect green, and every sunburnt rock glows into an 
ixgai^.^Modern Pxihdcrs, IV., p. 263. 

A drop of water, while it subdues the hue of a green 
leaf or blue flower into a soft grey, and shows itself 
therefore on the grassor the dock-leaf as a lustrous dim- 
ness, enhances the force of all warm colors, so that you 
never can see what the color of a carnation or a wild 
rose really is till you get the, dew on it. — A^'t of Eng- 
land, p. iOO. 

Whv we like a Rose. — Perhaps few people have 
ever asked themselves why they admire a rose so much 
more than all other flowers. If they consider, they 
will find, first, that red is, in a delicately gradated 
state, the loveliest of all pure colors ; and secondly, that 
in the rose there is no shado'w, except what is com- 
posed of color. x\ll its shadows are fuller in color than 
its lights, owing to the translucency and reflective 
power of its leave.-.;, — Modern Painters, III., p. 57. 



126 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

Mountain Colors the most Tender. — In some 
sense, a person who has never seen the rose-color of 
the rays of dawn crossing a blue mountain twelve or 
fifteen miles away, can hardly be said to know what 
tenderness in color means at all ; bright tendei'ness he 
may, indeed, see in the sky or in a flower, but this 
grave tenderness of the far-away-hill purples he cannot 
conceive. — .Modern Pointers, IV., p. 371. 

Love of BRKiirr Color will return to us. — Our 
reprobation of bright color is, I think, for the most part, 
mere affectation, and must soon be done av/ay with. 
Vulgarity, dulness, or impiety, will indeed always ex- 
press themselves through art in brown and grey, as 
in Rembrandt, Caravaggio, and Salvator ; but we are 
not wholly vulgar, dull, or impious ; nor, as moderns, 
are we necessarily obliged to continue so in any wise. 
Our greatest men, whotlier sad or gay, still delight, like 
the great men of all ages, in brilliant hues. The color- 
ing of Scott and Byron is full and pure ; that of Keats 
and Tennyson rich even to excess. — Modern Painters, 
III., p. 281. 

Absence of Color-Sense in the Greeks. — AGreek 
would have regarded the a[)ple-blossom simply with the 
eyes of a Devonshire farmer, as bearing on the probable 
price of cider, and would have called it red, cerulean^, 
purple, white, hyacinthine, or generally "aglaos," agree- 
able,, as happened to suit his verse. 

Again : we have seen how fond the Greek was of 
composing his paradises of rather damp grass ; but 
that in this fondness for grass there was always an 
undercurrent of consideration for his horses ; and the 
characters in it which pleased him most were its depth 
and freshness; not its color. — Modern. Painters, III., 
p. 24-1. 

Turner as a Colorist. — Claude and Cuyp had 
painted th? ^w^shine, Turner alone the sun color. . . . 

Note, with respect to this matter, that the peculiar 
innovation of Turner was the perfection of the color 
chord by means of scarlet. Other pointers had ren- 
dered the golden tones, and the blue tones, of sky; 
Titian esj eciallv the last, in perfectness. F>ut none had 



THE GRAPHIC ARTS.—l\-±rsriNG. 137 

dared to paint, none seem to have seen, the scarlet 
and purple. 

Nor was it only in seeing this color in vividness 
when it occurred in full light, that Turner differed from 
preceding painters. His most distinctive innovation as 
a colorist was his discovery of the scarlet .•shadow. 
" True, there is a sunshine whose light is golden, and 
its shadow gray ; but there is another sunshine, and 
that the purest, whose light is white, and its shadow 
scarlet." This was the essentially offensive, inconceiv- 
able thing, which he could not be believed in. There was 
some ground for the increduhty, because no color is 
vivid enough to express the pitch of light of pure white 
sunshine, so that the color given without the true in- 
tensity of light looks false. Nevertheless, Turner 
could not but report of the color truly. " I must in- 
deed be lower in the key, but that is no reason why I 
should be false in the note. Here is sunshine which 
glows even when subdued ; it has not cool shade, but 
kery shade." — llodern. Painters, V., pp. 338-341. 

The Chinese and Hindoos as Colorists. — The great 
men never know how or why they do things. They 
have no rules ; cannot comprehend the nature of rules ; — 
do not, usually, even know, in v/hat they do, what is best 
or what is worst : to them it is all the same ; something 
they cannot help saying or doing — one piece of it as 
good as another, and none of it (it seems to them) 
worth much. . . . 

And this is the reason for the somewhat singular, but 
very palpable truth that the Chinese, and Indians, and 
other semi-civilized nations, can color better than we do, 
and that an Indian shav/1 or Chinese vase are still, in in- 
vention of color, inimitablt' by us. It is their glorious 
ignorance of all rules that does it ; the .pure and true in- 
stincts have play, and do their work — instincts so subtle, 
that the least warping or compression breaks or blunts 
them ; and the moment we begin teaching people any 
rules about color, and make them do this or that, we 
crush theinstinct generally forever. Hence, hitherto, it 
has been an actual necessity, in order to obtain power of 
coloring, that a nation should be half-savage : everybody 
could color in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries ; 
but we were ruled and legalized into grey in the fif- 



128 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

teenth; — only a little salt simplicity of their sea na- 
tures at Venice still keeping their precious shell-fishy 
purpleness and power ; and now that is gone ; and no- 
body can color anywhere, except the Hindoos and Chi- 
nese ; but that need not be so, and will not be so long ; for, 
in a little while, people will find out their mistake, and 
give up talking about rules of color, and then everybody 
will color again, as easily as they now talk. — 3Ioder)i 
Painters, III., pp. 104-107. 

Salvatok and Fra Angelico. — It will be found 
that so surely as a painter is irreligious, thoughtless, or 
obscene in disposition, so surely is his coloring cold, 
gloomy, and valueless. The opposite poles of art in 
this respect are Fra Angelico and Salvator Rosa •, of 
whom the one was a man who smiled seldom, wept 
often, prayed constantly, and never harbored an im- 
pure thought. His pictures are simply so many pieces 
of jewelry, the colors of the draperies l)eing perfectly 
pure, as various as those of a painted window, chas- 
tened only by paleness, and relieved iipc^n a gold ground. 
Salvator was a dissipated jester and satirist, a man 
who spent his life in masquing and revelry. But his 
pictures are full of horror, and their color is for the 
most part gloomy grey. — Stones of Venice, 11., p. 14(5. 

Dead Color. — The law concerning color is very 
strange, very noble, in some sense almost awful. In 
every given touch laid on canvas, if one grain of the 
color is inoperative, and does not take its full part in 
producing the hue, the hue will be imperfect. The grain 
of color which does not work is dead. It infects all about 
it with its death. It must be got quit of, or the touch is 
spoiled. We acknowledge this instnictively in our 
use of the phrases " dead color," " killed color," " foul 
color." Those words are, in some sort, literally true. 
If more color is put on than is necessary, a heavy 
touch when a light one would have been enough, the 
quantity of color that was not wanted, and is overlaid 
by the rest, is as dead, and it pollutes the rest. There 
will be no good in the touch. 

The art of painting, properly so called, consists in 
laying on the least possible color that will produce the 
required result, and this measurement, in all tli<^ ul(i 



' THE GRAPHIC ARTS.— PAINTING. 129 

mate, that is to say, the principal, operations of color- 
ing, is so delicate that not one human hand in a million 
lias the required lightness. The final touch of any 
painter properly so named, of Correggio — Titian — 
Turner — or Reynolds — would be always quite invisible 
to any one watching the progress of the work, the films 
of hue being laid thinner than the depths of the grooves 
in mother-of-pearl. The work may be swift, apparent- 
ly careless, nay, to the painter himself almost uncon- 
scious. Great painters are so organized that they do 
their best work without effort; but analyze the touches 
afterwards, and you will find the structure and depth of 
the color laid mathematically demonstrable to be of 
literally infinite fineness, the last touches passing away at 
their edges by untraceable gradation. The very es- 
sence of a master's work may thus be removed by a 
picture-cleaner in ten minutes. — The Two Paths, 
p. 143. 

Five Laws of Color. — 1. All good color is gra- 
dated. A blush rose (or, better still, a blush itself), is 
the type of rightness in arrangement of pure hue. — 
2. All harmou ies of color dejjend for their vita lity on 
the action andhelpf id operation of every 2:)article of 
color they contain. — 3. The final particles of color 
necessary to the completeness of a color harmony 
are always infinitely small; either laid by immeas 
urably subtle touches of the pencil, or"^ produced 
by portions of the coloring substance, however dis- 
tributed, which are so absolutely small as to become 
at the intended distance infinitely so to the eye. — 
4. JVo color harmony is of }u(/h order unless it in- 
volves indescribahle tints. It is the best possible sign 
of a color when nobody who sees it knows what to call 
it, or how to give an idea of it to any one else. Even 
among simple hues the most valuable are those which 
cannot be defined ; the most precious purples will look 
brown beside pure purple, and purple beside pure 
brown; and the most precious greens will be called blue 
if seen beside pure green, and green if seen beside 
pure blue. — 5. The finer the eye for color, the less it 
nu'll require to [/ratify it intensely. But that little 
must be supremely good and pure, as the finest notes of 
a great singer, which are so near to silence. And a 



130 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

great colorist will make even the absence of color lovely, 
as the fading of the perfect voice makes silence sacred. 
— T/ie Two Paths, p. 150. 



PRE-RAPHAELITISM. 

True Pre-Raphaelite Work and its Imitations. 
— The true work represents all objects exactly as they 
would appear in nature, in the position and at the dis- 
tances which the arrangement of the picture supposes. 
The faise work represents them with all their details, as 
if seen through a microscope. — Modern Painter s,W ., 
p. 93. 

The Giottesque and the Pre-Rapiiaelite Move- 
ments Similar. — The Giottesque movement in the 
fourteenth, and Pre-Raj)haelite movement in the nine- 
teenth centuries, are precisely similar in bearing and 
meaning: both being the protests of vitality against 
mortality, of spirit against letter, and truth against 
tradition : and both, which is the more singular, literally 
links in one unbroken chain of feeling ; for exactly as 
Niecola Pisano and Giotto were helped by the classical 
sculptures discovered in their time, the Pre-Raphaelites 
have been helped by the works of Niecola and Giotto at 
Pisa and Florence : and thus the fiery cross of truth has 
been delivered from spirit to spirit, over the dust of 
intervening tjenerations. — Giotto and his Works, 
p. 17. 

The Union of Expression and Finish. — The per- 
fect unison of expression, as the painter's main purpose, 
with the full and natural exertion of his pictorial power 
in the details of the WQrk, is found only in the old Pre- 
Raphaelite periods, and in the modern Pre-Raphaelite 
school. In the works of Giotto, Angelico, Orcagna, 
John Bellini, and one or two more, these two conditions 
of high art are entirely fulfilled, so far as the knowl- 
edge of those days enable them to be fulfilled ; and in 
the modern Pre-Raphaelite school they are fulfilled 
nearly to the uttermost. Hunt's Light of the World is, 
I believe, the most perfect instance of expressional 
purpose with technical power, which the world has yet 
produced. — Modern Painters, III., p. 46. 



THE GRAPHIC ARTS.— PAINTING. 131 

RossETTi's " Annunciation," Mii.lais's " Blind 
Girl," and Burxe-Jones's "Marriage Dance." — 
Consider how the pious persons who had always been 
accustomed to see their Madonnas dressed in scrupu- 
lously folded and exquisitely falling robes of blue, with 
edges embroidered in gold — to find them also, sitting 
under arcades of exquisitest architecture by Bernini — 
and reverently to observe them receive the angel's mes- 
sage with their hands folded on their breasts in the 
most graceful positions, and the missals they had been 
previously studying laid open on their knees. Consider, 
I repeat, the shock to the feelings of all these delicately 
minded persons, on being asked to conceive a Virgin 
waking from her sleep on a pallet bed, in a plain room, 
startled by sudden words and ghostly presence which 
she does not comprehend, and casting in her mind wliat 
manner of salutation this should be. 

Again, consider, with respect to the second picture, 
how the learned possessors of works of established 
reputation by the ancient masters, classically cata- 
logued as "landscapes with figures;" and who held it 
for eternal, artistic law, that such pictures should either 
consist of a rock, with a Spanish chestnut growing out 
of the side of it, a:nd three banditti in helmets and big 
feathers on the top, or else of a Corinthian temple, 
built beside an arm of the sea; with the queen of 
Sheba beneath, preparing for embarkation to visit 
Solomon — the whole properly toned down with amber 
varnish : — imagine the first consternation, and final 
wrath, of these cognoscenti, at being asked to con- 
template, deliberately, and to the last rent of her ragged 
gown, and for principal object in a finished picture, a 
vagrant who ought at once to have been sent to the 
workhouse ; and some really green grass and blue flow- 
ers, as they may actually any day be seen on an English 
common-side. 

And, filially, let us imagine, if imagination fail us not, 
the far more wide and weighty indignation of the public, 
accustomed always to see its paiiitings of marriages elab- 
orated in Christian propriety , nd splendor ; with a 
bishop officiating, assisted by a dean and an arch- 
deacon ; the modesty of the bride expressed by a veil 
of the most expensive Valenciennes, and the robes of 



132 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

the bridesmaids designfd by the perfeetest of Parisian 
artists, and looped up with stuffed robins or other such 
tender rarities; — think with what sense of hitherto un- 
heard of impropriety, the British public must have re- 
ceived a picture of a marriage, in which the bride was 
only crowneil with flowers — at which the bridesmaids 
danced barefoot — and in which nothing was known, 
or even conjecturable, respecting the bridegroom, but 
his love! — The lliree (Uilors of Pre-RaphaeUtisrn., 
Nineteenth Century, 1878.* 



:j[ Prof. Ruskin's chief words on the Pre Raphaehtes will be found 
in the following books chronologieallv arranged- 
Arrowa of the Vhace, I., pp. GG-Sl ; Pvp-RdplKu-litiam (1851); Lectures 
on Architecture and Painthu/- HI ( I8:)3); Art of Eiigl(Ui(HlSS:i). 

See also the Edinburgh ]i'itiii'ss. Mnn-h'S. 18.58. The Nineteenth 
Century, for November and lieifiiilier, 18?8, contains articles by 
Eu.skin on •' The Three Colors ol I're-Raphaelitism." J 



THE GRAPHIC ARTS.— ENGRAVING, ETC. 133 

SECTION II.— THE GRAPHIC ARTS. 
Chapter II. — Engraving — Illumination, Etc. 



Engraving. — Engraving is, in brief torms, the Ari, 
of Scratch. ... To engrave is, in final strictness, " to 
decorate a surface with furrows." Cameos, in accurat- 
est terms, are minute sculptures, not engravings. A 
})loughed field is the purest type of such art ; and is, 
on hilly land, an exquisite piece of decoration. — ^Iri- 
adne, pp. 21-2o. 

In metal engraving, you cut ditches, fill them with 
ink, and press your paper into them. In wood engrav- 
ing, you leave ridges, rub the tops of them with ink, 
and stamp them on your paper. 

The instrument with which the substance, whether 
of the wood or steel, is cut away, is the same. It is a 
solid ploughshare, which, instead of throwing the earth 
aside, throws it up and out, producing at first a simple 
ravine, or furrow, in the wood or metal, which you can 
widen by another cut, or extend by successive cuts. . . . 

Since, then, in wood printing, you print from the 
surface left solid ; and, in metal printing, from the 
hollows cut into it, it follows that if you put few 
touches on wood, you draw, as on a slate, with white 
lines, leaving a quantity of black; but if you put few 
touches on metal, you draw with black lines, leaving a 
quantity of white. 

Now the eye is not in the least offended l)y quantity 
of white, but is, or ought to be, greatly saddened and 
offended by quantity of black. Hence it follows that 
you must never put little work on wood. You must 
not sketch upon it. You may sketch on metal as much 
as you please. — Ariadne, p. 40. 

The Ancient and the Modern Styles of Engrav- 
ing.- — The essential difference between these men 



134 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

[Diii-er and the artists of the Renaissance] and t"he 
moderns is that these central masters cut their line 
for the most part with a single furrow, giving it depth 
by force of hand or wrist, and retouching, not in the 
furroio itself, but vnth others beside it . . . 

[The Modern school deepens its] lines in successive 
cuts. The instant consequence of the introduction of 
this method is the restriction of curvature ; you cannot 
follow a complex curve again with precision through its 
furrow. If you are a dextrous ploughman, you can 
drive your plough any number of times along the sim- 
ple curve. But you cannot repeat again exactly 
the motions which cut a variable one. You may retouch 
it, enei-gize it, and deepen it in parts, but you cannot 
cut it all through again equally. And the retouch- 
ing and energizing in parts is a living and intel- 
lectual process ; but the cutting all through, equally, 
a mechanical one. The difference is exactly such 
as that between the dexterity of turning oat two simi- 
lar mouldings from a lathe, and carving them with the 
free hand, like a Pisan sculptor. And although splen- 
did intellect, and subtlest sensibility, have been spent 
on the production of some modern plates, the mechan- 
ical element introduced by their manner of execution 
always overpowers both ; nor can any plate of con- 
sunnnate value ever be produced in the modern 
method. — Ariadne, pp. 75, 76. 

Blake and Rembrandt. — In expressing conditions 
of glaring and flickering light, Blake is greater than 
Rembrandt.- — J^'ler/tents of Uravliaj, p. 190. 

Engravers Themselves have Destroyed their 
Craft. — Engravers complain that photography and 
cheap woodcutting have ended their finer craft. No 
complaint can be less grounded. They themselves de- 
stroyed their own craft, by vulgarizing it. Content in 
their beautiful mechanism, they ceased to learn and to 
feel, as artists; they put themselves under the order of 
publishers and printsellers ; they worked indiscrimi- 
nately from whatever was put into their hands — from 
Bartlett as willingly as from Turner, and from Mul- 
ready as carefully as from Raphael. — Ariadne, p. 71). 



THE GRAPHIC ARTS.— ENGRAVING, ETC. 135 

Engraving the Grammar of Painting.— The ex- 
cellence of a beautiful engraving is primai'ily in the 
use of these resources [dots and net-work of lines] to 
exhibit the qualities of the original picture, with de- 
light to the eye in the method of translation; and. the 
language of engraving, when once yoa begin to under- 
stand it, is, in these respects, so fertile, so ingenious, 
so ineffably subtle and severe in its grammar, that you 
may quite easily make it the subject of your life's in- 
vestigation, as you would the scholarship of a lovely 
literature. 

But in doing this, you would withdraw, and neces- 
sarily withdraw, your attention from the higher quali- 
ties of art, precisely as a grammarian, who is that, and 
nothing more, loses command of the matter and sub- 
stance of thought. And the exquisitely mysterious 
mechanisms of the engi-aver's method have, in fact, 
thus entangled the intelligence of the careful draughts- 
man of Europe ; so that since the final perfection of 
this translator's power, all the men of finest patience 
and finest hand have stayed content with it — the sub- 
tlest draughtsmanship has perished from the canvas,* 
and sought more popular praise in this labyrinth of dis- 
ciplined language, and more or less dulled or degraded 
thought. And, in sum, I know no cause more direct 
or fatal, in the destruction of the great schools of 
European art, than the perfectness of modern line en- 
graving. — Ariad'Me, p. 08. 

Illuminated Manuscripts. — Perfect illumination is 
only writing made lovely ; the moment it passes into 
picture-making it has lost its dignity and function. 
For pictures, small or great, if beautiful, ought not to 
be painted on leaves of books, to be worn with service; 
and pictures, small or great, not beautiful, should be 
painted nowhere. — Lectures on Art, p. 96. 

A well-written book is as much pleasanter and more 
beautiful than a printed one as a picture is than an en- 
graving: and there are many forms of the art of illu- 
mination which were only in their infancy at the time 

* An effort has lately been made in France, by IMeissi mier, Gerijme, 
and their school, to recover it, with marvelous collateral skill of en- 
gravers. The etching of Gcrome's Louis XYI. and Moliere is one of 
the completest pieces of skilful mechanism ever put on metal. 



K:!6 A IWSKLY ANTHOLOaV. 

.when the wooden blocks of Germany abolished the art 
of scripture, and of which the revival will be a neces- 
sary result of a proper study of natural history. — Iwrs, 
III., p. 54. 

Painted Glass Windows. — In the case of windows, 
the points which we have to insist upon are, the trans- 
parency of the glass and its susceptibility of the most 
brilliant colors ; jaid therefore the attempt to turn 
painted Vv'indows into pretty pictures is one of the most 
gross and ridiculous barbarisms of this pre-eminently 
barbarous century. The true perfection of a painted 
window is to be serene, intense, brilliant, like flaming 
jewelry ; full of easily legible and quaint subjects, and 
exquisitely subtle, yet simple, in its harmonies. In a 
word, this perfection has been consummated in the de- 
signs, never to be surpassed, if ever again to be ap- 
proached by human art, of the French windows of the 
twelfth and thirteenth centuries. — Stones of Venice, 
II., pp. 395, 396. 

The value of hue in all illuminations on painted glass 
of fine periods depends primarily on the expedients 
used to make the colors palpitate and fluctuate; in- 
equality of brilliancy being the condition of brilliancy, 
just as inequality of accent is the condition of power 
and loveliness in sound. The skill with which the 
thirteenth century illuminators in books, and the Indians 
in shawls and carpets, use the minutest atoms of color 
to gradate other colors, and confuse the eye, is the first 
secret in their gift of splendor: associated, however, 
with so many other artifices which are quite instinctive 
and unteachable, that it is of little use to dwell upon 
them. Delicacy of organization in the designer given, 
you will soon have all, and without it, nothing. — TJie 
Two Paths, p. 150. 

WooD-Crxs. — The execution of the plumage in 
Bewick's birds is the most masterly thing ever yet done 
in wood-cutting — Elements of Drawing, p. 190. 

Now calculate — or think enough to feel the impos- 
sibility of calculating — the number of wood-cuts used 
daily for our popular prints, and how many men are 
night and day cutting 1,050 square holes to the square 
inch, as the occupation of their manly life. And Mrs. 



THE GRAPHIC ARTS.— ENGRAVING, ETC. 13? 

Beecher Stowe and the North Americans fancy they 
have aboHshed slavery ! — Ariadne, p. 55. 

A wood-cut never can be so beaiitifiil or good a 
thing as a painting, or hne engraving. But in its own 
separate and useful way, an excellent thing, because, 
practised rightly, it exercises in the artist, and suni- 
mons in you, the habit of abstraction ; that is to say, 
of deciding what are the essential points in the things 
you see, and seizing these. — Ariadne, p. 58. 

If we were at this moment to come across a Titian 
wood-cut, or a Diirer wood-cut, we should not like it — 
those of us at least who are accustomed to the cheap 
work of the day. We don't hke, and can't like, that 
long; but when we are tired of one bad cheap thing, 
we throw it aside and buy another bad cheap thing; 
and so keep looking at bad things all our lives. Now, 
the very men who do all that quick bad work for us 
are capable of doing perfect work. Only, perfect work 
can't be hui-ried, and therefore it can't be cheap beyond 
a certain point. — ^1 Joy For Ever, p. 30. 

While no entirely beautiful thing can be represented 
in a wood-cut, every form of vulgarity or unpleasant- 
ness can be given to the life ; and the result is, that, 
especially in our popular scientific books, the mere 
effort to be amusing and attractive leads to the publi- 
cation of every species of the abominable. No micro- 
scope can teach the beauty of a statue, nor can any 
wood-cut represent that of a nobly bred human form; 
but only last term we saw the whole Ashmolean So- 
ciety held in a trance of rapture by the inexplicable 
decoration of the posteriors of a flea; and I have 
framed for you here, around a page of the scientific 
journal which styles itself, " Knowledge," a collection 
of wood-cuts out of a scientific survey of South Amer- 
ica, presenting collectively to you, in designs igno- 
rantly drawn and vilely engraved, yet with the pecu- 
liar advantage belonging to the cheap wood-cut, what- 
ever, through that fourth part of the round world, from 
Mexico to Patagonia, can be found of savage, sordid, 
vicious, or ridiculous in humanity, without so much as 
one exceptional indication of a graceful form, a true 



138 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOG Y. 

instinct, or a cultivable capacity. — Art of England, 
p. 74. 

Etching. — Etching is an indolent and blundering 
method at the best. — Ariadne, p. 100. 

If you ever happen to meet with the two volumes of 
" Grimm's German Stories," which were illustrated 
[by Cruikshank] luigago, pounce upon them instantly; 
the etchings in them are the finest things, next to 
Rembrandt's, that, as far as I know, have been done 
since etching was invented. — Kknients of Drcnobuj, 
p. 189. 

Flaxmak's Outlines to Dante. — Flaxman's out- 
lines to Diinte contain, I think, examples of almost 
every kind of falsehood and feebleness which it is pos- 
sible for a trained artist, not base in thought, to commit 
or admit, both in design and execution. — Elemods of 
Draicing, p. IDl. 

Caricature. — No teaching, no hard study, will ever 
enable other people to equal, in their several ways, the 
works of Leech or Cruikshank ; whereas, the power of 
pure drawing is communicable, within certain limits, to 
every one who has good sight and industry. 1 do not, in- 
deed, know how far, by devoting the attention to points 
of character, caricaturist skill may be laboriously at- 
tained ; but certainly the power is, in the masters of the 
school, innate from their childhood. — Modem Paint- 
ere., IV., p. 413. 

"Punch." — The definite and every year more em- 
phatic assertion [of the laws of Beauty] in the pages ol 
" Punch" is the ruling charm and most legitimate pride 
of the immortal periodical. Day by day the search for 
grotesque, ludicrous, or loathsome subject which de- 
graded the caricatures in its original, the " Charivari," 
and renders the dismally comic journals of Italy the mere 
plagues and cancers of the State, became, in our English 
satirists, an earnest comparison of the things which were 
graceful and honorable, with those which were grace- 
less and dishonest, in modern life. Gradually the kind 
and vivid genius of John Leech, capable in its brightness 
of finding pretty jest in everything, but capable in its 
tenderness also of rejoicing in the beauty of every- 



THE GRAPHIC ARTS.— ENGRAVING, ETC. 139 

thing, softened and illumined with its loving wit the en- 
tire scope of English social scene ; the graver power of 
Tenniel brought a steady tone and law of morality into 
the license of political contention; and finally the acute, 
highly trained, and accurately physiological observation 
of Du Maurier traced for us, to its true origin in vice 
or virtue, every order of expression in the mixed circle 
of metropolitan rank and wealth : and has done so 
with a closeness of delineation the like of which has 
not been seen since Holbein, and deserving the most re- 
spectful praise in that, whatever power of satire it 
may reach by the selection and assemblage of telling 
points of character, it never degenerates into carica- 
ture. — Art of England, p. 79. 

The Animal Drawings of John Lewis. — Rubens, 
Rembrandt, Snyders, Tintoret, and Titian, have all, in 
various ways, drav/n wild beasts magnificently ; but 
they have in some sort humanized or demonized them, 
making them either ravenous fiends or educated beasts, 
that would draw cars, and had respect for hermits. 
The sullen isolation of the brutal nature ; the dignity 
and quietness of the mighty limbs ; the shaggy moun- 
tainous power, mingled with grace, as of a flowing 
stream ; the stealthy restraint of strength and wrath 
in every soundless motion of the gigantic frame ; all 
this seems never to have b<)en seen, much less drawn, 
until Lewis drew and himself engraved a series of ani- 
mal subjects, now many years ago. — rre-Haphael- 
itisnt, p. 20. 

Raphael and Rembrandt as Chiakoscurists. — 
You probably have been beguiled, before now, into ad- 
miring Raphael's Transfiguration, in which everybody's 
faces and limbs are half black ; and into supposing 
Rembrandt a master of chiaroscuro, because he can 
paint a vigorous portrait with a black dab under the 
nose ! 

Both Raphael and Rembrandt are masters, indeed ; 
but neither of them masters of light and shade, in treat- 
ment of which the first is always false, and the second 
always vulgar. The only absolute masters of light and 
shade are those who never make you think of light and 
shade, more than Nature herself does. 



140 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

It will be twenty years, however, at least, before you 
can so much as see the finer conditions of shadow in 
masters of that cahbre. — Laics of Fesole, p. 117. 

GusTAVE DoRE. — Thank you for sending me your 
friend's letter about Gustave Dore; he is wrong, how- 
ever, in thinking there is any good in those illustrations 
of Elaine. I had intended to speak of them afterwards, 
for it is to my mind quite as significant — almost as 
awful — a sign of what is going on in the midst of us, 
that our great English poet should have suffered his 
work to be thus contaminated, as that the lower Evan- 
gelicals, never notable for sense in the arts, should have 
got their Bibles dishonored. Those Elaine illustrations 
are just as impure as anything else that Dore has done; 
but they are also vapid, and without any one merit 
whatever in point of art. The illustrations to the 
Contes Drolatiques are full of power and invention ; 
but those to Elaine are merely and simply stupid ; 
theatrical betises, with the taint of the charnel-house 
on them besides. — Letter to Thos. Dixon, Time and 
Tide,^. 71. 

Stamped Paper for Water-Colors. — From all I 
can gather respecting the recklessness of modern paper 
manufacture, my belief is, that though you may still 
handle an Albert Diirer engraving, two hundred years 
old, fearlessly, not one-half of that time will have passed 
over your modern water-colors, before most of them 
will be reduced to mere white or brown rags ; and 
your descendants, twitching them contemptuously into 
fragments between finger and thumb, will mutter 
against you, half in scorn and half in anger, " Those 
wretched nineteenth century people ! they kept vapor- 
ing and fuming about the world, doing what they 
called business, and they couldn't make a sheet of paper 
that wasn't rotten." ... I am inclined to think, my- 
self, that water-color ought not to be used on paper at 
all, but only on vellum, and then, if properly taken 
care of, the drawing would be almost imperishable. 
Still, paper is a much more convenient material for 
rapid work ; and it is an infinite absurdity not to se- 
cure the goodness of its quality, when we could do so 
without the slightest trouble. Among the many favors 



THE GRAPHIC ARTS.— ENGRAVING, ETC. 141 

which I am going to ask from our paternal government 
when we get it, will be that it will supply its little 
boys with good paper. You have nothing to do but to 
let the government establish a paper manufactory, un- 
der the superintendence of any of our leading chemists, 
who should be answerable for the safety and complete- 
ness of all the processes of the manufacture. The 
government stamp on the corner of your sheet of 
drawing-paper, made in the perfect way, should cost 
you a shilling, which would add something to the rev- 
enue ; and when you bought a water-color drawing for 
fifty or a hundred guineas, you would have merely to 
look in the corner for your stamp, and pay your extra 
shilling for the security that your hundred guineas 
were given really for a drawing, and not for a colored 
rag. — A Joy I'^or Ever, pp. 31, 32. 



143 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOG F". 



SECTION III.— ARCHITECTURE. 



True architecture is a thing which puts its builders 
to cost — not which pays them dividends. . . . True 
erchiteeture is built by the man who wants a house for 
himself, and builds it to his own liking, at his own cost; 
not for his own gain, to the liking of other people. — 
Mrs, 1., p. 280. 

Every great national architecture has been the re- 
sult and exponent of a great national religion. You 
can't have bits of it here, bits there — you must have it 
everywhere, or nowhere. > It is not the monopoly of a 
clerical company — it is n*ot the exponent of a theolog- 
ical dogma — it is not the hieroglyphic writing of an 
initiated priesthood; it is the manly language of a 
people inspired by resolute and common purpose, and 
rendering resolute and common fidelity to the legible 
laws of an undoubted God. — (Jroum of' Wild Olive, 
Lecture, II., p. 53. 

Architecture is the work of nations ; but we cannot 
have nations of great sculptors. Every house in every 
street of every city ought to be good architecture, but 
we cannot have Flaxman or ThoJ'waldsen at work upon 
it. . . . Your business as an architect, is to calculate 
only on the co-operation of inferior men. to think for 
them, to indicate for them such expressions of your 
thoughts as the weakest capacity can comprehend and 
the feeblest hand can execute. This is the definition 
of the purest architectural absti'actions. They are the 
•deep and laborious thoughts of the greatest men, put 
i."to such easy letters that they can be written by the 
simplest. Theij are exjyressions of the mind of 



AJn.'IIJTECTUEE. 14:5 

manhood bi/ i/ie /tandu of chihlltvod. — Stones of 
Venice, p. 241. 

You cannot have good architecture merely by ask- 
ing people's advice on occasion. All good architecture 
is the' expression of national life and character; and it 
is produced by a prevalent and eager national taste, or 
desire for beauty. — (Jroirn of Wild Olive, Led. II., 
p. 45. 

Every man has, at some time of his life, personal 
interest in architecture. He has influence on the de- 
sign of some public building; or he has to buy, or 
build, or alter his own house. It signifies less whether 
the knowledge of other arfp. be general or not; men 
may live without buying pictures or statues: but, in 
architecture, all must in some ^^'ay commit themselves; 
they mxist do mischief, and waste their money, if they 
do not know how to turn it to account. — Stones of 
Venice, I., p. 8. 

Sculpture not subordinate to Architecture. — 
Do you think the man who designed the procession on 
the portal of Amiens was the subordinate workman ? 
that there was an architect over him, restraining him 
within certain limits, and ordering of him his bishops 
at so much a mitre, and his cripples at so much a 
crutch ? Not so. Here, on this sculptured shield, 
rests the Master's hand; this is the centre of the Mas- 
ter's thought ; from this, and in subordination to this, 
waved the arch and sprang the pinnacle. Having 
done this, and being able to give human expression 
and action to tho stone, all the rest — the rib, the niche, 
the foil, tho shaft — were mere toys to his hand 
and accessories to his conception: and if once you 
also gain the gift of doing this, if once you can carve 
one fronton such as you have here, I tell you, you 
would be able — so far as it depended on your inven- 
tion — to scatter cathedrals over England as fast as 
clouds rise from its streams after summer rain. — The 
Two Paths, pp. 89, 90. 

A great architect must be a great scidptor or 
painter. This is a universal law. No person who is 
not a great sculptor or painter ca7i be an architect. If 



144 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

he is not a sculptoi- or painter, lie can only be a huildet. 
The three greatest architects hitherto known in the 
world were Phidias, Giotto, and Michael Angelo; with 
all of whom, architecture was only their play, sculpture 
and painting their wovk.—Lectut-es on Arehitecture, 
p. G5. 

The So-called Five Ordeus of Ahciiitecture. — 
Five orders [of architecture] ! There is not a side 
chapel in any Gothic cathedral but it has fifty orders, 
the worst of them better than the best of the Greek 
ones, and all new ; and a single inventive human soul 
could create a thousand orders in an hour. — Stones of 
Venice, III., p. 100. 

Novelty in Architecture. — The very essence of a 
Style, properly so-called, is that it should be practised 
fo7' ages, and applied to all purposes; and that so long 
as any given style is in practice, all that is left for in- 
dividual imagination to accomplish must be within the 
scope of that style, not in the invention of a new one. 
— The Two Paths, \x^\. 

The Crystal Palace. — I have received, " with the 
respects of the author," a pamphlet on the Crystal 
Palace ; which tells me, in its first sentence, that the 
Crystal Palace is a subject which every cultivated 
Englishman has at heart ; in its second, that the Crys- 
tal Palace is a household word, and is the loftiest 
moral triumph of the world ; and in its third, that the 
Palace is declining, it is said- — verging towards decay, 
I have not heard anything for a long time which has 
more pleased me ; and beg to assure the author of the 
pamphlet in question that I never get up at Heme Hill 
after a windy night without looking anxiously towards 
Norwood in the hope that " the loftiest moral triumph 
of the world" may hare been blown away. — Fors, H., 
p. 415. 

The Castles of the Middle Ages. — Nothing can 
be more noble or interesting than the true thirteenth or 
fourteenth century castle, when built in a difficult posi- 
tion, its builder taking advantage of every inch of 
ground to gain more room, and of every irregularity of 
surface for purposes of outlook and defence; so that the 
castle sate its rock as a strong rider sits his horse — 



ARCHITECTURE. 145 

fitting its limbs to every writhe of the flint beneath it; 
and fringing the nionntain ])romontory far into the sky 
with the wild crests of its fantastic battlements. Of 
such castles we can see no more. — Arrows of the Chacc, 
I., p. 146. 

The Ekglish Cottage. — If you think over the 
matter you will find that you actually do owe, and 
ought to owe, a great part of your pleasure in all cot- 
tage scenery, and in all the inexhaustible imagery of 
literature which is founded upon it, to the conspicuous- 
ness of the cottage roof — to the subordination of the 
cottage itself to its covering, which leaves, in nine cases 
out of ten, really more roof than anything else. It is, 
indeed, not so much the whitewashed walls — nor the 
flowery garden — nor the rude fragments of stones set 
for steps at the door — nor any other picturesqueness of 
the building which interests you, so much as the grey 
bank of its heavy eaves, deep-cushioned with green 
moss and golden stonecrop. — Lectures on Architect- 
ure, p. 25. 

Brick and Terra-Cotta in Architecture. — Just 
as many of the finest works of the Italian sculptors 
were executed in porcelain, many of the best thoughts 
of their architects are expressed in brick, or in the 
softer material of terra-cotta ; and if this were so in 
Italy, where there is not onecity from whose towers we 
may not descry the blue outline of Alp or Apennine, ever- 
lasting quarries of granite or marble, how much more 
ought it to be so among the fields of England ! I believe 
that the best academy for her architects, for some half 
century to come, would be the brick-field ; for of this 
they may rest assured, that till they know how to use 
clay, they will never know how to use vaaxhlQ.-^ Stones 
of Venice, II., p. 200. 

Medium-sized Blocks best for Buildings. — The 
invention of expedients for the raising of enormous 
stones has always been a characteristic of partly sav- 
age or corrupted races. A block of marble not larger 
than a cart with a couple of oxen could carry, and a 
cross-beam, with a couple of pulleys raise, is as large as 
should generally be used in any building. The employ- 
ment of large masseiJ is sure to lead to vulgar exhibi- 



146 A R USKiyf A NTHOL G T. 

tions of g^eometrical arrangement, and to draw away 
the attention from the sculpture. In general, rocks 
naturally break into such pieces as the human beings 
that have to build with them can easily lift, and no 
larger should be sought for. — Aratra Pentelici, p. 97. 

Let not Art be too Common or Familiar. — Nor 
do I hold it usually an advantage to art, in teaching, 
that it should be common, or constantly seen. In be- 
coming intelligibly and kindly beautiful, while it remains 
solitary and unrivalled, it has a greater power. West- 
minster Abbey is more didactic to the English nation, 
than a million of popular illustrated treatises on archi- 
tecture.— ^4 ?Y'«(7>.'e, p. 2(5. 

Permanent Homes. — I believe that the wandering 
habits which have now become almost necessary to our 
existence, lie more at the root of our bad architecture 
than any other character of modern times. \ye always 
look upon our houses as mere temporary lodgings. — 
Lectures on Architecture, p. 55. 

The one point you may be assured of is, that your 
happiness does not at all depend on the size of your house 
— (or, if it does, rather on its smallness than large- 
ness) ; but depends entirely on your having peaceful 
and safe possession of it — on your habits of keeping it 
clean and in order — on the materials of it being trust- 
worthy, if they are no more than stone and turf — and 
on your contentment with it, so that gradually you may 
mend it to your mind, day by day, and leave it to your 
children a better house than it was. 

To your children, and to theirs, desiring for them 
that they may live as you have lived ; and not strive to 
forget you, and stammer when any one asks who 
vou were, because, forsooth, thev have become fine 
folks by your help.— i=ons-, 1., pp."'280, 281. 

A House suited to You. — " But I mean to make 
money, and have a better and better house every ten 
years." 

Yes, I know you do. 

If you intend to keep that notion, I have no word 
more to say to you. Fare you — not well, for you can- 
not ; but as you may. 

But if you have sense, and feeling, determine what 



ARCHITECTURE.. 147 

sort of a house will be fit for you ; — determine to work 
for it — to get it — and to die in it, if tiie Lord will. 

" What sort of house will be tit for me? — but of 
course the biggest and finest I can get will be fittest ! " 

Again, so says the Devil to you ; and if you believe 
him, iie will find you fine Jodgings enough — for rent. 
But if you don't believe him, consider, I repeat, what 
sort of house will be fit for you ? 

" Fit ! — but what do you mean by fit ? " 

I mean, one that you can entirely enjoy and manage ; 
but which you will not be proud of, except as you make 
it charming in its modesty. If you are proud of it, it 
is un^A for you — better than a man in your station of 
life can by simple and sustained exertion obtain; and 
it should be rather under such quiet level than above, 
Ashesteil was entirely fit for Walter Scott, and Walter 
Scott was entirely happy there. Abbotsford was fit 
also for >S7r Walter Scott ; and had he been content 
with it, his had been a model life. But he would fain 
still add field to field — and died homeless. — Fors,\\., 
p. 298. 

Round every raiiroad station, out of the once quiet 
fields, there bursts up first a blotch of brick-fields, and 
then of ghastly houses, washed over with slime into 
miserable fineries of cornice and portico. A gentleman 
would hew for himself a log hut, and thresh for him- 
self a straw bed, before he would live in such. — Ai'- 
roifis of the Chace., II., p. 98. 

The AhcuiTectuke of Cities. — All lovely archi- 
tecture was designed for cities in cloudless air ; for 
cities in which piazzas and gardens opened in bright 
populousness and peace ; cities built that men might 
live happily in them, and take delight daily in each 
other's presence and powers. But our cities, built in 
black air, which, by its accumulated foulness, first ren- 
ders all ornam.ent invisible in distance, and then chokes 
its interstices with soot ; cities v/hich are mere crowded 
masses of store, and warehouse, and counter, and are 
therefore to the rest of the world what the larder and 
cellar are to a private house ; cities in which the 
object of men is not life, but labor; arid in which all 
chief magnitude of edifice is to enclose machinery; cities 



148 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

in which the streets are not the avenues for the pass- 
ing and procession of a happy people, but the drains 
for the discharge of a tormented mob, in which the 
only object in reaching any spot is to be transferred to 
another ; in which existence becomes mere transition, 
and every creature is only one atom in a drift of 
human dust, and current of interchanging particles, 
circulating here by tunnels under ground, and there by 
tubes in the air ; for a city, or cities, such as this, no 
architecture is possible — nay, no desire of it is possible 
to their inhabitants. — Lectures on Architecture, 
p. 137. 

It does not matter how many beautiful public build- 
ings you possess, if they are not supported by, and in 
harmony with, the private houses of the town. Neither 
the mind nor the eye will accept a new college, or a 
new hospital, or a new institution, for a city. It is the 
Canonga-te, and the Princes Street, and the High 
Street that are Edinburgh. . . . Do not think that you 
can have good architecture merely by paying for it. It 
is not by subscribing liberally for a large building once 
in forty years that you can call up architects and in- 
spiration. It is only by active and sympathetic atten- 
tion to the domestic and every day work which is done 
for each of you, that you can educate either yourselves 
to the feeling, or your builders to the doing, of what is 
truly great. 

Well but, you will answer, you cannot feel interested 
in architecture: you do not care about it, and cannot 
care about it. I know you cannot. About such archi- 
tecture as is built now-a-days, no mortal ever did or 
could care. You do not feel interested in hearing the 
same thing over and over again ; — why do you suppose 
you can feel interested in seeing the same thing over 
and over again, were that thing even the best 
and most beautiful in the world ? — Lectures on Ar- 
chitecture, p. 11. 

Suburban Architecture. — An English clergyman, 
a master of this University, a man not given to senti- 
ment, but of middle age, and great practical sense, told 
me . . . that he never could enter London from his coun- 
try parsonage but with closed eyes, lest the sight of the 



AUCmrECTURE.. 149 

blocks of houses which the raih'oad intersected in the 
suburbs should unfit him, by the horror of it, for his 
day's work. ... To have any right morality, happi- 
ness, or art in any country where the cities are thus 
built, or thus, let me rather say, clotted and coagidated ; 
spots of a dreadful mildew spreading by patches and 
blotches over the countiy they consume. You must 
have lovely cities, crystalized, not coagulated, into 
form ; limited in size, and not casting out the scum and 
scurf of them into an encircling eruption of shame, but 
girded each with its sacred pomosrium, and with gar- 
lands of gardens full of blossoming trees, and softly 
guided streams. — Lectures on Art, p. 79. 

Blackfriar's Bridge. — Asa Greek put human life 
into his pillars and produced the caryatid ; and an 
Egyptian lotos life into his pillars, and produced the 
lily capital : so here, either of them would have put some 
gigantic or some angelic life into those colossal sockets. 
He would perhaps have put vast winged statues of 
bronze, folding their wings, and grasping the iron rails 
with their hands; or monstrous eagles, or serpents 
holding with claw or coil, or strong four-footed animals 
couchant, holding with the paw, or in fierce action, 
holding with teeth. Thousands of grotesque or of 
lovely thoughts would have risen before him, and the 
bronze forms, animal or human, would have signified, 
either in symbol or in legend, whatever might be 
gracefully told respecting the pui'poses of the work and 
the districts to which it conducted. Whereas, now, 
the entire invention of the designer seems to have ex- 
hausted itself in exaggerating to an enormous size a 
weak form of iron nut, and in conveying the informa- 
tion upon it, in large letters, that it belongs to the Lon- 
don, Chatham, and Dover Railway Company. — 
Athena, p. 138. 

Cathedrals. — All the great thirteenth-century 
cathedrals in France have been destroyed, within my 
own memory, only that architects might charge com- 
mission for putting up false models of them in tlieii" 
place. — Fors, I., p. 71. 

Nothing is more unseemly than that a great multi- 
tude should find its way out and in, as ants and wasps 



150 A R US KIN A NTH OLOGY. 

do, through holes; and nothing more undignified than 
the paltry doors of many of our English cathedrals, 
which look as if they were made, not for the open 
egress, but for the surreptitious drainage of a stagnant 
congregation . Besides, the expression of the church door 
should lead us, as far as possible, to desire at least the 
western entrance to be single, partly because no man of 
right feeling would willingly lose the idea of unity and 
fellowship in going up to worship, which is suggested 
by the vast single entrance; partly because it is at the 
entrance that the most serious words of the building 
are always addressed, by its sculptures or inscriptions, 
to the worshipper; and it is well, that these words 
should be spoken to all at once, as by one great voice, 
not broken up into weak repetitions over minor doors. 
— Stones of Venice, I., p. 179. 

An English Cathedral. — Let us go together up 
the more retired street, at the end of which we can see 
the pinnacles of one of the towers, and then through 
the low grey gateway, with its battlemented top and 
small latticed window in the centre, into the inner 
private-looking road or close, where nothing goes in but 
the carts of the tradesmen who supply the bishop and 
the chapter, and where there are little shaven grass- 
plots, fenced in by neat rails, before old-fashioned 
groups of somewhat diminutive and excessively trim 
houses, with little oriel and bay windows jutting out 
here and there, and deep wooden cornices and eaves 
painted cream color and white, and small porches to 
their doors in the shape of cockle-shells, or little, 
crooked, thick, indescribable wooden gables warped a 
little on one side; and so forward till we come to 
larger houses, also old-fashioned but of red brick, and 
with gardens behind them, and fruit walls, which show 
here and there, among the nectarines, the vestiges of 
an old cloister arch or shaft, and looking in front on 
the cathedral square itself, laid out in rigid divisions of 
smooth grass and gravel walk, yet not uncheerful, es- 
pecially on the sunny side where the canon's children 
are walking with their nurserymaids. And so, taking 
care not to tread on the grass, we will go along the 
Straight walk to the west front, and there stand for a 



ARCHITECTURE. 151 

time, looking up at its deep-pointed porches and the 
dark pkices between their pillars where there were 
statues once, and where the fragments, here and there, 
of a stately figure are still left, which has in it the like- 
ness of a king, perhaps indeed a king on earth, perhaps 
a saintly king long ago in heaven ; and so higher and 
higher up to the great mouldering v.all of rugged 
sculpture and confused arcades, shattered, and grey, 
and grisly with heads of dragons and mocking fiends, 
worn by the rain and swirling winds into yet un- 
seemlier shape, and colored on their stony scales by 
the deep russet-orange lichen, melancholy gold ; and so, 
higher still, to the bleak towers, so far above that the 
eye loses itself among the bosses of their traceries, 
though they are rude and strong, and only sees like a 
drift of eddying black points, now closing, now scatter- 
ing, and now settling suddenly into invisible places 
among the bosses and flowers, the crowd of restless 
birds that fill the whole square with that strange 
clangor of theirs, so harsh and yet so soothmg, like the 
cries of birds on a solitary coast between the cliffs and 
sea. — Stones of Vcvice. II., pp. 67, 68. 

The Materials of the Sculptor-Akciiitect. — 
From visions of angels, down to the least important 
gesture of a child at play, whatever may be conceived 
of Divine, or beheld of Human, may be dared or 
adopted by you: throughout the kingdom of anisnal 
life, no creature is so vast, or so minute, that you can- 
not deal with it, or bring it into service ; the lion and 
the crocodile will couch about your shafts ; the moth 
and the bee v/ill sun themselves upon your flowers ; for 
you, the fawn will leap; for you, the snail be slow ; for 
you, the dove smooth her bosom ; and the hawk spread 
her wings toward the south. All the wide world of 
vegetation blooms and bends for you ; the leaves trem- 
ble that you may bid them be still under the marble 
snow ; the thorn and the thistle, which the earth casts 
forth as evil, are to you the kindliest servants ; no dy- 
ing petal, nor drooping tendril, is so feeble as to have 
no more help for you ; no robed pride of blossom so 
kingly, but it will lay aside its purple to receive at 
your hands the pale immortality. Is there anything in 



153 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

common life too mean — in common things too trivial — 
to be ennobled by your touch I As there is nothing in 
life, so there is nothing in lifelessness which has not its 
lesson for you, or its gift ; and when you are tired of 
watching the strength of the plume, and the tenderness 
of the leaf, you may walk down to your rough river 
shore, or into the thickest markets of your thoroughfares, 
and there is not a piece of torn cable that will not twine 
into a perfect moulding ; there is not a fragment of 
cast-away matting, or shattered basket-work, that will 
not work into a chequer or capital. Yes: and if you 
gather up the very sand, and break the stone on which 
you tread, among its fragments of all but invisible 
shells you will find forms that will take their place, and 
that proudly, among the starred traceries of your vault- 
ing; and you, who can crown the mountain with its 
fortress, and the city with its towers, are thus able also 
to give beauty to ashes, and worthiness to dust. — The 
Tiro Paths, pp. 95, 96. 

European Architecture in general. — All Eu- 
ropean architecture, bad and good, old and new, is de- 
rived from Greece througli Rome, and colored and per- 
fected from the East. The history of Architecture is 
nothing but the tracing of the various modes and direc^ 
tions of this derivation. Understand this, once for all: 
if you hold fast this great connecting chie, you may 
string all the types of successive architectural inven- 
tion upon it like so many beads. The Doric and the 
Corinthian orders are the roots, the one of all Roman- 
esque, massy-capitaled buildings — Norman, Lombard, 
Byzantine, and what else you can name of the kind ; 
and the Corinthian of all Gothic, Early English, Frenclif 
German and Tuscan. Now observe : those old Greeks 
gave the shaft ; Rome gave the arch ; the Arabs 
pointed and foliated the arch. The shaft and arch, the 
frame-work and strength of architecture, are from the 
race of Japheth ; the spirituality and sanctity of it from 
Ismael, Abraham, and Shem. — Stones of Venice, I., 
p. 27. 

The Roman, the Lombard, and the Arabian 
Styles. — The work of the Lombard was to give hardi- 
hood and system to the enervated body and enfeebled 



AnCHITECTUnE. 153 

mind of Christondoiii ; that of the Arab was to punish 
idolatry, and to proclaim the spirituality of worship. 
The Lombard covered every church which he built 
with the sculptured representations of bodily exercises 
— huntini>- and war. The Arab banished all imagina- 
tion of creature form from his temples, and proclaimed 
from their minarets, " There is no god but God." 
Opposite in their character and mission, aliKe in their 
magnificence of energy, they came from the North 
and from the South, the glacier torrent and the lava 
stream: they met and contended over the wreck of the 
Roman empire ; and the very centre of the struggle, 
the point of pause of both, the dead water of the oppo- 
site eddies, charged with embayed fragments of the 
Roman wreck, is Venice. 

The Ducal Palace of Venice contains the three ele- 
ments in exactly equal proportions — the Roman, Lom- 
bard, and Arab. It is the central building of the 
world. 

The lava stream of the Arab, even after it ceased to 
flow, warmed the whole of the northern air ; and the 
history of Gothic architecture is the history of the re- 
finement and spiritualization of Northern work under 
its influence. — Stones of Venice, L, pp. 27, 30, 33. 

The Lombard of early times seems to have been ex- 
actly what a tiger would be, if you could give him love 
of a joke, vigorous imagination, strong sense of justice, 
fear of hell, knowledge of northern mythology, a stone' 
den, and a mallet and chisel; fancy him pacing up and 
down m the said den to digest his dinner, and striking 
on the wall, with a new fancy in his head, at every 
turn, and you have the Lombardic sculptor. . . . 

The Lombard animals are all (dive, and fiercely 
alive too, all impatience and spring : the Byzantine 
birds peck idly at the fruit, and the animals hardly 
touch it with their noses. The einquecento birds in 
Venice hold it up daintily, like train-bearers ; the birds 
in the earlier Gothic peck at it hungrily and naturally; 
but the Lombard beasts gripe at it like tigers, and 
tear it off with writhing lips and glaring eyes. 



154 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 



GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. 

A Gothic cathedral is properly to be defined as a 
piece of the most magnificent associative sculpture, ar- 
ranged on the noblest principles of building, for the 
service and delight of multitudes ; and the proper defi- 
nition of architecture, as distinguished from sculpture, 
is merely " the art of designing sculpture for a particu- 
lar place, and placing it there on the best principles of 
building." 

Hence it clearly follows, that in modern days we 
have r\o architects. The term " architecture " is not 
so much as understood by us. — Lectvres on Archi- 
tectm-e, pp. 65, 00. 

Modern arcliitects decorate the tops of their build- 
mgs. Mediaeval ones decorated the bottom. . . It is not 
putting ornament high that is wrong ; but it is cutting 
it too fine to be seen, wherever it is. . . . This is the 
great modern mistake. 

Now the Gothic builders placed their decoration on 
a precisely contrary principle, and on the only rational 
principle. All their best and most delicate work they 
put on the foundation of the building, close to the spec- 
tator, and on the upper parts of the walls they put 
ornaments large, bold, and capable of being plainly 
seen at the necessary distance. — Lectures on Archi- 
tecture, pp. 43, 45. 

Gothic Architecture not the Work of the 
Clergy. — Good architecture is the work of good and 
believing men ; therefore, you say, at least some people 
say, " Good architecture must essentially have been 
the work of the clergy, not of the laity." No — a 
thousand times no ; good architecture has always been 
the work of the commonalty, ';;(>^ of the clergy. What, 
you say, those glorious cathedrals — the pride of 
Europe — did their builders not form Gothic architect- 
ure ? No ; they corrupted Gothic architecture. 
Gothic was formed in the baron's castle, and the 
burgher's street. It was formed by the thoughts, and 
hands, and powers of free citizens and soldier kings. 
By the monk it was used as an instrument for the aid 



ARCHITECTURE. 155 

of his superstition ; when that superstition became a 
beautiful madness, and the best hearts of Europe vain- 
ly dreamed and pined in the cloister, and vainly 
raged and perished in the crusade — through that fury 
of perverted faith and wasted war, the Gothic rose also 
to its loveliest, most fantastic, and, finally, most fool- 
ish dreams ; and, in those dreams, was lost. — Crown 
of Wild Olive, Lect. II., p. 53. 

The flamboyant traceries that adorn the fagade of 
Rouen Cathedral had once their fellows in every win- 
dow of every house in the market-place ; the sculptures 
that adorn the porches of St. Mark's had once their 
match [in kind] on the walls of every palace on the 
Grand Canal; and the only difference between the 
church and the dwelling-house was, that there existed 
a symbolical meaning in the distribution of the parts of 
all buildings meant for worship, and that the painting 
or sculpture was, in the one case, less frequently of 
profane subject than in the other. — iStones of Yodce, 
II., p. 103. 

The French Cathedrals. — As examples of Gothic, 
ranging from the twelfth to the fourteenth century, the 
cathedrals of Chartres, Rouen, Amiens, Rheims, and 
Bourges, form a kind of cinque-foil round Notre Dame 
of Paris, of which it is impossible to say which is the 
more precious petal ; but any of those leaves would be 
worth a complete rose of any other country's work ex- 
cept Italy's. Nothing else in art, on the surface of the 
round earth, could represent any one of them, if de- 
stroyed, or be named as of any equivalent value. — 
Arroics of the Chace, I., p. 151. 

The Gothic Style not derived from Vegetation. 
— I have before alluded to the strange and vain sup- 
position, that the original conception of Gothic archi- 
tecture had been derived from vegetation — from the 
symmetry of avenues, and the interlacing of branches. 
It is a supposition which never could have existed for 
a moment in the mind of any person acquainted with 
early Gothic; but, however idle as a theory, it is most 
valuable as a testimony to the character of the per- 
fected style. It is precisely because the reverse of 
this theory is the fact, because the Gothic did not arise 



156 A nUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

out of, but develop itself into, a resemblance to vege- 
tation, that this resemblance is so instructive as an 
indication of the temper of the builders. It was no 
chance suggestion of the form of an arch from the 
bending of a bough, but a gradual and continual dis- 
covery of a beauty in natural forms which could be 
more and more perfectly transferred into those of stone, 
that influenced at once the heart of the people, and the 
form of the edifice. The Gothic architecture arose in 
massy and mountainous strength, axe-hewn, and iron- 
bound, block heaved upon block by the monk's enthu- 
siasm and the soldier's force ; and cramped and stanch- 
ioned into such weight of grisly wall, as might bury the 
anchoret in d;irkness, and beat back the utmost storm 
of battle, suffering by the same narrow crosslet the 
passing of the sunbeam, or of the arrow. Gradually, as 
that monkish enthusiasm became more thoughtful, and 
as the sound of war became more and more intermit- 
tent beyond the gates of the convent or the keep, the 
stony pillar grew slender and the vaulted roof grew 
light, till they had wreathed themselves into the sem- 
blance of the summer woods at their fairest ; and of 
the deaa field-flowers, long trodden down in blood, sweet 
monumental statues were set to bloom for ever, beneath 
the porch of tlie temple, or the canopy of the tomb. 
— Stones of Yen ire II., p. 201. 

The True Sources of Gothic ARcriiTECTURE. — 
The true gable, as it is the simplest and most natural, 
so I esteem it the grandest of roofs ; whether rising in 
ridgy darkness, like a gi*ey slope of slaty mountains, 
over the precipitous walls of the northern cathedrals, or 
stretched in burning breadth above the white and square- 
set groups of the southern architecture. B«t this dif- 
ference between its slope in the northern and southern 
structure is a matter of far greater importance than is 
commonly supposed, and it is this to which I would 
especially direct the reader's attention. 

One main cause of it, the necessity of throwing off 
snow in the north, has been a thousand times alluded 
to : another I do not remember having seen noticed, 
namely, that rooms in a roof are comfortably habitable 
in the north, which are painful sotto phytnhi in Italy; 
and that there is iu wet climates a natural tendency in 



ARCHITECTURE. 157 

all men to live as high as possible, out of the damp and 
mist. These two causes, together with accessible 
quantities of good timber, have induced in the north a 
general steep pitch of gable, which, when rounded or 
squared above a tower, becomes a spire or turret ; and 
this feature, worked out with elaborate decoration, is 
the key-note of the whole system of aspiration, so called, 
which the German critics have so ingeniously and falsely 
ascribed to a devotional sentiment pervading tlie North- 
ern Gothic : I entirely and boldly deny the whole 
theory ; our cathedrals were for the most part built by 
wordly people, who loved the world, and would have 
gladly staid in it for ever ; whose best hope was the 
escaping hell, which they thought to do by building 
cathedrals, but who had very vague conceptions of 
Heaven in general, and very feeble desires respecting 
their entrance therein : and the form of the spired 
cathedral has no more intentional reference to Heaven, 
as distinguished from the flattened slope of the Greek 
pediment, than the steep gable of a Norman house has, 
as distinguished from the flat roof of a Syrian one. . . . 

There is, however, in the north an animal activity 
which materially aided the svstem of buildiny; bcijun in 
mere utility — an animal life, naturally expressed in 
erect work, as the languor of the south in reclining or 
level work. Imagine the difference between the action 
of a man urging himself to his work in a snow storm, 
and the inaction of one laid at his length on a sunny 
bank among cicadas and fallen olives, and you will have 
the key to a whole group of sympathies which were 
forcefully expressed in the architecture of both; remem- 
bering always that sleep would be to the one luxury, 
to the other death. 

And to the force of this vital instinct we have far- 
ther to add the influence of natural scenery; and chiefly 
of the groups and wildernesses of the tree which is to the 
German mind what the olive or palm is to the southern, 
the spruce fir. The eye which has once been habituated 
to the continual serration of the pine forest, and to the 
multiplication of its infinite pinnacles, is not easily 
offended by the repetition of similar forms, nor easily 
satisfied by the simplicity of flat or massive outlines, — 
iStones of Venice, I., pp. 154-156, 



158 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

The Poetry of Gothic Terms. — These [Greek] 
pediments, and stylobates, and architraves never ex- 
cited a single pleasurable feeling in you — never will, to 
the end of time. They are evermore dead, lifeless, and 
useless, in art as in poetry, and though you built as 
many of them as there are slates on your house-roofs, 
you will never care for them. They will only remain 
to later ages as monuments of the patience and pliability 
with which the people of the nineteenth century saci'i- 
ficed their feelings to fashions, and their intellects to 
forms. But on the other hand, that strange and thrill- 
ing interest with which such words strike you as are in 
any wise connected with Gothic architecture — as for in- 
stance, Vault, Arch, Spire, Pinnacle, Battlement, Bar- 
bican, Porch, and myriads of such others, words ever- 
lastingly poetical and powerful wherever they occur — 
is a most true and certain index that the things 
themselves are delightful to you, and will ever continue 
to be so. — Lectures on Architecture, p. 35. 

The Gothic Porch. — You know how the east winds 
blow through those unlucky couples of pillars [of the 
Greek portico], which are all that your architects find 
consistent with due observance of the Doric order. 
Then, away with these absurdities; and the next house 
you build, insist upon having the pure old Gothic porch, 
v.'alled in on both sides, with its pointed arch enti-ance 
and gable roof above. Under that, you can put down 
your umbrella at your leisure, and, if you will, stop a 
moment to talk with your friend as you give him the 
parting shake of the hand. And if now and then a 
wayfarer found a moment's rest on a stone seat on each 
side of it, I believe you would find the insides of your 
houses not one whit the less comfortable. — Lectures 
on Architecture, p. 37. 

The Gothic Arch. — There is a farther reason for 
our adopting the pointed arch than its being the strong- 
est form; it is also the most beautiful form in which a 
window or door-head can be built. Not the most beau- 
tiful because it is the strongest ; but most beautiful, 
because its form is one of those which, as we know by 
its fi-equent occurrence in the work of nature around 



ARCHITECTURE. 159 

US, has been appointed by the Deity to be an everlas^ 
ing source of pleasure to the human mind. 

(rather a branch from any of the trees or flowers to 
which the earth owes its principal beauty. You will 
find that every one of its leaves is terminated, more or 
less, in the form of the pointed arch ; and to that form 
owes its grace and character. — Lectures on Architect- 
ure, p. 18. 

How TO TELL Good Gothic. — First. Look if the 
roof rises in a steep gable, high above the walls. If it 
does not do this, there is something wrong; the building 
is not quite pure Gothic, or has been altered. . . . 

Secondly. Look if the principal windows and doors 
have pointed arches with gables over them. If not 
pointed arches, the building is not Gothic. . . . 

Thirdly. Look if the arches are cusped, or apertures 
fuhated. . . . 

Fourthly. If the building meets all the first three 
conditions, look if its arches in general, whether of win- 
dows and doors, or of minor ornamentation, are carried 
on true shafts lolth bases and capitals. If they are, 
then the building is assuredly of the finest Gothic style. 
Stones of Venice, II., pp. 227, 228. 

To TELL WHETHER A PlECE OF PuKE GoTlIIC BE 

ALSO Masterly Architecture. — [For a building] may 
be very pure Gothic, and yet, if a copy, or originally 
raised by an ungiftedbuildei', very bad architecture. . . , 
First. See if it looks as if it had been built by 
strong men ; if it has the sort of roughness, and large- 
ness, and nonchalance, mixed in places with the ex- 
quisite tenderness which seems always to be the sign- 
manual of the broad vision, and massy power of men 
who can see past the work they are doing, and betray 
here and there something like disdain for it. If the 
building has this character, it is much already in its 
favor; it will go hard but it proves a noble one. If it 
has not this, but is altogether accurate, minute, and 
scrupulous in its workmanship, it must belong to either 
the very best or the very worst of schools : the very 
best, in which exquisite design is wrought out with un- 
tiring and conscientious care, as in the Giottesque 



160 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

Gothic; or the very worst, in which mechanism has 
taken the place of design. . . . 

Secondly. Observe if it be irregular, its different 
parts fitting themselves to different purposes, no one 
caring what becomes of them, so that they do their 
work. If one part always answers accurately to 
another part, it is sure to be a bad building ; and the 
greater and more conspicuous the irregularities, the 
greater the chances are that it is a good one. . . . 

Thirdly. Observe if all the traceries, capitals, and 
other ornaments are of perpetually varied design. If 
not, the work is assuredly bad. 

Lastly. Head the sculpture. Preparatory to read- 
ing it, you will have to discover whether it is legible 
(and, if legible, it is nearly certain to be worth reading). 
On a good building, the sculpture is ahoai/s so set, and 
on such a scale, that at the ordinary distance from 
which the edifice is seen, the sculpture shall be thorough- 
ly intelligible and interesting. In order to accomplish 
this, the uppermost statues will be ten or twelve feet 
high, and the upper ornamentation wiU be colossal, in- 
creasing in fineness as it descends, till on the founda- 
tion it will often be wrought as if for a precious cabi- 
net in a king's chamber ; but the spectator will not 
notice that the upper sculptures are colossal. He will 
merely feel that he can see them plainly, and make 
them all out at his ease. — Stones of Venice, II., pp. 
229, 230. 

Egyptian and Greek buildings stand, for the most 
part, by their own weight and mass, one stone passively 
incumbent on another: but in the Gothic vaults and 
traceries there is a stiffness analogous to that of the 
bones of a limb, or fibres of a tree ; an elastic tension 
and communication of force from part to part, and also 
a studious expression of this throughout every visible 
line of the building. ■ And, in like manner, the Greek 
and Egyptian ornament is either mere surface engrav- 
ing, as if the face of the wall had been stamped with a 
seal, or its lines are flowing, lithe, and luxuriant ; in 
either case, there is no expression of energy in frame 
work of the ornament itself. But the Gothic ornatnent 
stands out in prickly independence, and fros;y fortitude, 



ARCHITECTURE. 131 

jutting into crockets, anil freezing into pinnacles; here 
starting up into a monster, tiiere germinating into a 
blossom ; anon knitting itself into a branch, alternately 
thorny, bossy, and bristly, or writhed into every form 
of nervous entanglement ; but, even when most grace- 
ful, never for an instant languid, always quickset; err- 
ing, if at all, ever on the side of bruscmerie. — Stones 
of Venice, If., p. 203. 

Renaissance Architecture. — Raised at once into 
all the magnificence of which it was capabie by Michael 
Angelo, then taken up by men of real intellect and im- 
agination, such as Scamozzi, Sansovino, Inigo Jones, 
and Wren, it is impossible to estimate the extent of its 
influence en the European mind ; and that the more, be- 
cause few persons are concerned with painting, and, of 
those few, the larger number regard it with slight at- 
tention ; but all men are concerned with architecture, 
and have at some time of their lives serious business 
with it. It does not much matter that an individual 
loses two or three hundred pounds in buying a bad pic- 
ture, but it is r.o be regretted that a nation should lose 
two or three hundred thousand in raising a ridiculous 
building. Nor is it merely wasted wealth or distem- 
pered conception which we have to regret in this Renais- 
sance architecture: but we shall find in it partly the 
root, partly the expression, of certain dominant evils of 
modern times — over-sophistication and ignorant classic- 
alism ; the one destroying the healthfulness of general 
society, the other rendering our schools and universi- 
ties useless to a large number of the men who pass 
through them. 

Now Venice, as she was once the most religious, was 
in her fall the most corrupt, of European states ; and as 
she was in her strength the centre of the pure currents 
of Christian architecture, so she is in her decline the 
source of the Renaissance. It was the originality and 
splendor of the Palaces of Vicenza and Venice which 
gave this school its eminence in the eyes of Europe; and 
the dying city, magnificent in her dissipation, and graceful 
in her follies, obtained wider woiship in her decrepitude 
than in her youth, and sank from tlie midst of her ad- 
mirers into the grave. — /i>it'nes of Venice, I., p. 38. 



162 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

Renaissance architecture is the school which has con- 
ducted men's inventive and constructive faculties from 
the Grand Canal to Gower Street ; from the marble shaft, 
and the lancet arch, and the wreathed leafage, and the 
glowing and melting harmony of gold and azurt, to the 
square cavity in the brick wall. — /Stones of Venice, 
III., p. (3. 

If vre think over this matter a little, we shall soon 
feel that in those meagre lines there is indeed an ex- 
pression of aristocracy in its v/orst characters ; coldness, 
perfectness of training, incapability of emotion, want of 
sympathy with the weakness of lower men, blank, 
hopeless, haughty self-sufficiency. All these characters 
are written in the Renaissance architecture as plainly 
as if they were graven on it in words. For, observe, 
all other architectures have something in them that 
common men can enjoy; some concession to the simpli- 
cities of humanity, some daily bread for the hungei- 
of the multitude. Quaint fancy, rich ornament, bright 
color, something that shows a sympathy with men of 
ordinary minds and hearts ; and this wrought out at 
least in the Gothic, with a rudeness showing that the 
workman did not mind exposing his own ignorance if 
he could please others. But the Renaissance is exactly 
the contrary of all this. It is rigid, cold, inhuman; in- 
capable of glowing, of stooping, of conceding for an in. 
stant. Whatever excellence it has is refined, high- 
trained, and deeply erudite ; a kind which the architect 
well knows no common mind can taste. He proclaims 
tons aloud. ''You cannot feel my work unless you 
study Vitruvius. I will give you no gay color, no 
pleasant sculpture, nothing to make you happy; for I 
am a learned man. All the pleasure you can have in 
anything I do is in its proud breeding, its rigid formal- 
ism, its peifect finish, its cold tranquillity. I do not 
work for the vulgar, only for the men of the academy 
and the court." . . . Here was an architecture that 
would not shrink, that had in it no submission, no 
mercy. The proud princes and lords rejoiced in it. It 
was full of insult to the poor in its every line. It 
would not be built of the materials at the poor man's 
hand ; it would not roof itself with thatch or shinjrle. 



ARCHITECTURE. \(Si 

and black oak beams; it would not wall itself with 
rough stone or brick; it would not pierce itself with 
small windows where they were needed ; it would not 
niche itself, wherever there was room for it, in the 
street corners. It would be of hewn stone ;it would have 
its windows and its doors, and its stairs and its pillars, 
in lordly order, and of stately size ; it would have its 
wings and its corridors, and its halls and its gardens, as 
if all the earth were its own. And the rugged cottages of 
the mountaineers, and the fantastic streets of the labor- 
ing burgher were to be thrust out of its way, as of a 
lower species. — Stones of Venice, III., pp. iYl, 63. 

I have not grasp enough of thought to embrace the 
evils which have resulted among all the orders of Eu- 
ropean society from the introduction of the renaissance 
schools of building, in turning away the eyes of the be- 
holder from natural beauty, and reducing the workman 
to the level of a machine. In the Gothic times, writing, 
painting, carving, casting — it mattered not what — were 
all works done by thoughtful and happy men ; and the 
illumination of the volume, and the carving and casting 
of wall and gate, employed, not thousands, but millions, 
of true and noble artists over all Christian lands. Men 
in the same position are now left utterly without intel- 
lectual power or pursuit, and, being unhappy in their 
work, they rebel against it; hence one of the worst 
forms of Unchristian Socialiism, — Lertares on Archl- 
tectto'e, p. 7(). 



[Ruskin's first work on Architecture — tlie "Seven 
Lamps," is so immature and flat in style (as he says him- 
self in the preface to edition of 1 S8()— • • being overlaid with 
gilding, and overshot too splashiiy and cascade-fashion 
with gushmg of words'"), and so entirely devoid of the 
brilliant and epigrammatic paragraphs that make the in- 
terest of his later works, tliat it seems best to give a brief 
summary of the noteworthy portions of its contents 
ratiier than quote from it at length. In regard to the 
title Prof. Ruskin states, in one of his prefaces, that he 
has always had a suspicion of the number seven : for 
when he wrote his " Seven Lamps '' he had great difliculty 
in preventing them from becoming eight or nine on his 
hands. By the word " lamp " he is understood to mean 



164 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

tlie inner spirit, or principle, whieli both inspired and is 
embodied in various works of architecture. The Lain[) 
of 8acrih(!e, tlie Lamp of Truth, of Beauty, Power, Lite, 
Memory, Obedience — under these lieadings are grouped 
his thoughts. Ornament, he says, cannot be overcliarged, 
if it be good and m its place. All beautiful designs are 
taken from n ttuivil objects. Power in architecture is ob- 
taine'd bj^ increase of magnituile in a building ; sublimity 
is attained l)y mass, deep glooms and shadows, and vast 
areas of towering wall-surface on whicii the sunshine 
may sleep in noble strength. Don't place the decorations 
of a temple on a shop-front : in a place where rest is for- 
bidden, so is beauty. Do not forge golden ploughshares, 
bind ledgers with cnaniei, nor ihrash witli sculptured 
flails. It is proper that railroad stations si lould be built 
in a severe and simple style, because the people wliojiass 
through them have no time for the contemplation of 
elaborate and beautiful sculptures. It is a la\\ of architect- 
ural proportion that one large or principal object shall be 
harmonized with a number of smaller or inferior ones : 
the pinnacles of a cathedral are eini)loyed chiefly to fur- 
nisli the third term to the spire anti tower. 

No one may dare to toucli sculpture witli color unless 
he be a Tintoret or Giorgione. The lovely and mellow 
tones of the natural stones are preferable to color laid on 
by an inferior hand. Color in nature is arranged on an 
entirely separate system from form, or anatomy : the 
spots of tlie leopard, tlie stripes of the zebra, or tlie 
plumage of a bird are independent of the muscular lines 
of their bodies. So in architecture, color must be visibly 
independent of form : a column should never be painted 
with vertical lines, but crosswise 

The life of good architecture consists in its freedom 
from a distressing mechanical regularity or symmetry : 
the old master-architects purposely broke up llie regu- 
larity of their arches and columns by deft adjustments 
to the irregularities of the walls and otlicr architectural 
masses. 

In vital carving, a masculine toucli is often shown by 
rough handling : all carving is good v>hi<-h is (\oni} with 
enjoyment and zest ; all carving bad v.liich is done as 
an enforced task. 

To this summary of tlie " Seven Lamps " may be added 
a few words from the preface to the 1^73 edition of tlie 
'•Stones of Venice": — "No book of mine," says Prof. 
Ruskin, " lias had so niucli inlluence on art as the 
'Stones of Venice;' but this influence lias been pos- 
sessed only by tiie third pnrt of it. the ivip.aining two- 
thirds having been resolutely ignored by tlie British 
public. And. as a physician would in most cases ratlier 
hear that his patieiit luul thrown all of his medicine out 
of the window, than that he had sent word to his apothe- 



ARCHITECTURE. 165 

cary to leave out two of its three ingredients, so I would 
rather, for ray own part, that no architects had ever con- 
descended to adopt one of the views suggested iii this 
book, than that any slioukl have made the partial use of 
it which has mottled our manufactory chimneys with 
black and red brick, dignified oiu- banks and drapers' 
shops with Venetian tracery, and pinched our parish 
churches into dark and slipjx'ry arrangements for the 
advertisement of cheap colored glass and pantiles."] 



166 A liUSKJN ANTHOLOGY. 



SECTION IV.— SCULPTURE. 



Curlyle's general symbol of the best attainments of 
northern religious sculpture — " three whale-cubs com- 
bined by boiling." — Pleasures of l^ngland, p. 9. 

No great sculptor, from the beginning of art to the 
end of it, has ever carved, or ever will, a deceptive 
drapery. He has neither time nor will to do it. His 
mason's lad may do that if he likes. A man who can 
carve a limb or a face never finishes inferior parts, but 
either with a hasty and scornful chisel, or with such grave 
and strict selection of their lines as you know at once 
to be imaginative, not imitative. — Mornitjgs in Flor- 
ence, p. 17. 

From the Elgin marbles down to the lightest tendril 
that curls round a capital in the thirteenth century, 
every piece of stone that has been touched by the hand 
of a master, becomes soft with under-life, not resem- 
bling nature merely in skin-texture, nor in fibres of 
leaf, or veins of flesh ; but in the broad, tender, un- 
speakably subtle undulation of its organic form. — Lect- 
ures on Art, p. 114. 

The sculpture on your friend's house unites in effect 
with that on your own. The two houses form one 
grand mass — far grander than either separately ; much 
more if a third be added — and a fourth ; much more if 
the whole street — if the whole city — join in the solem:i 
harmony of sculpture. Your separate possessions of 
pictures and prints are to you as if yon sang pieces of 
music with your single voices in your own houses. But 
your architecture would be as if you all sang together in 
one mjghty choir. — T^ectures on Architecture, p. 55. 

Portrait Sculpture Third-rate Work. — Portrait 
sculpture, which is nothing more, is always third-rate 



SCULPTURE. 16T 

work, even when produced by men of geniu:;; — nor 
does it in the least require men of genius to pro- 
duce it. To paint a portrait, indeed, implies the very 
highest gifts of painting ; but any man, of ordinary 
p;(tience and artistic feeling, can carve a satisfactory 
inist — Arati'a Pentelici, p. 41. 

The Choir of the Cathedral of Amiens. — Wood- 
carving was the Pieard's joy from his youth up, and, so 
far as I know, there is nothing else so beautiful cut out 
of the goodly trees of the world. 

Sweet and young-grained wood it is : oak, trained 
and chosen for such work, sound now as four hundred 
years since. Under the carver's hand it seems to cut 
like clay, to fold like silk, to grow like living branches, 
to leap like living flame. Canopy crowning canopy, pin- 
nacle piercing j^innacle — it shoots and wreaths itself 
into an enchanted glade, inextricable, imperishable, 
fuller of leafage than any forest, and fuller of story 
than any book. — Bible of Amiens, p. 93. 

The two great Schools of Sculpture. — The con- 
ditions necessary for the production of a perfect school 
of sculpture have only twice been met in the history of 
the world, and then for a short time ; nor for short 
time only, but also in narrow districts, namely, in the 
valleys and islands of Ionian Greece, and in the strip of 
land deposited by the Arno, between the Apennine 
crests and the sea. 

All other schools, except these two, led severally by 
Athens in the fifth century before Christ, and by Flor- 
ence in the fifteenth of our own era, are imperfect ; and 
the best of them are derivative : these two are consum- 
mate in themselves, and the origin of what is best in 
others. . . . And so narrow is the excellence even of 
these two exclusive schools, that it cannot be said of 
either of them that they represented the entire human 
form. The Greeks perfectly drew, and perfectly 
moulded the body and limbs ; but there is, so far as I 
am aware, no instance of their representing the face as 
well as any great Italian. On the other hand, the 
Italian painted and carved the face insuperably ; but I 
believe there is no instance of his having perfectly rep- 
resented the body, which, by command of his religion, it 



108 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

became his pride to despise, and his safety to mortify. 
— Aratru PcitteUci, pp. 117, 118. 

NiccoLA PisANo's PuLPiT. — Behold ! between the 
capitals of the pillars and the sculptured tablets there 
are interposed live cusped arches, the hollow beneath 
the pulpit showing dark through their foils. You have 
seen such eusped arches before, you think ? 

Yes, gentlemen, you have ; but the Pisans had not 
And that intermediate layer of the pulpit means — the 
change, in a word, foi' all Europe, from the Parthenon 
to Amiens Cathedral. For Italy it means the rise of 
her Gothic dynasty ; it means the duomo of Milan in- 
stead of the temple of Paestum. — Yal I/Arno, 
p. 14. 

Sculpture and the Drama. — Of the two mimetic 
arts, [sculpture and the drama] the drama being more 
passionate, and involving conditions of greater excite- 
ment and luxury, is usually in its excellence the sign of 
culminating strength in the people ; while a fine sculpt- 
ure, requiring always submission to severe law, is an 
unfailing proof of their being in early and active pro- 
gress. There is no instance of fine sculpture being 
produced by a nation either torpid, weak, or in de- 
cadence. Their drama may gain in grace and wit ; 
but their sculpture, in days of decline, is cdirays base. 
— Aratra Podelici, p. 28. 

The Apollo BELvinEUE. — Thefallof Greece was in- 
stant when her gods again became fables. The Apollo 
Belvidere is the work of a sculptor to whom Apollon- 
ism is merely an elegant idea on which to exhibit his 
own skill. He does not himself feel for an instant that 
the handsome man in the unintelligible attitude, with 
drapery hung over his left arm, as it would be hung to 
dry over a clothes-line, is the Power of the Sun. — 
Ariadne, p. 92, 

Nothing but Life must de sculptured.— All de- 
light in mere incidental beauty, which painting often 
triumphs in, is wholly forbidden to sculpture; — for in- 
stance, in painting tlie branch of a tree, you may 
rightly represent and enjoy the lichens and moss on it, 
but a sculptor must not touch one of them : they are 
inessential to the tree's life — he must give the flow and 



SCULPTURE. 169 

bending of the branch only, else he does not enough "see 
Pallas " in it. 

Or to take a higher instance, here is an exquisite 
little painted poem, by Edward Frere; a cottage in- 
terior, one of the thousands which within the last two 
months have been laid desolate in unhappy France. 
Every accessory in the painting is of value — the fire- 
side, the tiled floor, the vegetables lying upon it, and 
the basket hanging from the roof. But not one of 
these accessories would have been admissible in sculpt- 
ure. You must carve nothing but what has life. 
" Why 1 " you probably feel instantly inchned to ask 
me.— You see the principle we have got, instead of being 
blunt or useless, is such an edged tool that you are 
startled the moment I apply it. " Must we refuse 
every pleasant accessory and picturesque detail, and 
petrify nothing but living creatures 1 " — Even so : I 
would not assert it on my own authority. It is the 
Greeks who say it, but whatever they say o^f^sculpture, 
be assured, is true.— ^4r«^m Pentelici, p. 73. 

Sculpture in its Relation to the Life of the 
Workman.— Understand this clearly. You can teach 
a man to draw a straight line, and to cut one ; to strike 
a curved line, and to carve it ; and to copy and carve 
any number of given lines or forms, with admirable 
speed and perfect precision ; and you find his work per- 
fect of its kind : but if you ask him to think about any 
of those forms, to consider if he cannot find any better 
in his own head, he stops ; his execution becomes hesi- 
latin<^ • he thinks, and ten to one he thinks wrong ; ten 
to oife'he makes a mistake in the first touch he gives to 
his work as a thinking being. But you have made a 
man of him for all that. He was only a machine before, 

^n animated tool. ... , , .i j i * + 

Go forth again to gaze upon the old cathedral tront, 
where you have smiled so often at the fantastic igno- 
rance of the old sculptors: examine once more those 
dcrly goblins, and formless monsters, and stern statues, 
/matomiless and rigid ; but do not mock at them, for 
they are signs of the life and liberty of every workman 
who struck the stone ; a freedom of thought, and rank 
in scale of being, such as no laws, no charters, no char- 



1 70 AH USKIN A NTHOL OGY. 

ities can secure ; but which it must be the first aim of 
all Europe at this day to regain for her children. — 
Stones of Venice, II., pp. 162, 163, 

The Duomo of Pisa and the Crystal Palace. — 
In the vault of the apse of the Duomo of Pisa, was a 
colossal image of Christ, in colored mosaic, bearing to 
the temple, as nearly as possible, the relation which the 
statue of Athena bore to the Parthenon; and in the 
same manner, concentrating the imagination of the 
Pisan on the attributes of the God in whom he be- 
lieved. 

In precisely the same position with respect to the 
nave of the building, but of larger size, as proportioned 
to the three or four times greater scale of the whole, a 
colossal piece of sculpture was placed by English de- 
signers, at the extremity of the Crystal Palace, in pre- 
paration for their solemnities in honor of the birthday 
of Christ, in December, 1867 or 1868. 

That piece of sculpture was the face of the clown in 
a pantomime, some twelve feet high from brow to chin, 
which face, being moved by the mechanism which is 
our pride, every half minute opened its mouth from ear 
to ear, showed its teeth, and revolved its eyes, the 
force of these periodical seasons of expression being in- 
creased and explained by the illuminated inscription 
underneath " Here we are again." 

When it is assumed, and with too good reason, that the 
mind of the English populace is to be addressed, in the 
principal Sacred Festival of its year, by sculpture such as 
this, I need scarcely point out to you that the hope is 
absolutely futile of advancing their intelligence by col- 
lecting within this building, (itself devoid absolutely of 
every kind of art, and so vilely constructed that those 
who traverse it are continually in danger of falling over 
the cross-bars that bind it together) examples of sculpt- 
ure filched indiscriminately from the past work, bad 
and good, of Turks, Greeks, Romans, Moors, and Chris- 
tians, miscolored, misplaced, and misinterpreted ; here 
thrust into unseemly corners, and there mortised to- 
gether into mere confusion of heterogeneous obstacle ; 
pronouncing itself hourly more intolerable in weariness, 
mitil any kind of relief is sought from it in steam 



SCULPTURE. 171 

wheelbarrows or cheap toysliops ; and most of all in 
beer and meat, the corks and the bones being dropped 
through the chinks in the damp deal flooring of the Eng- 
lish Fairy Palace. — Aratra Pentelici, p. 40. 

Terra Cotta Work. — You must put no work into 
it requiring niceness in dimension, nor any so elaborate 
that it would be a great loss if it were broken, but as 
clay yields at once to the hand, and the sculptor can do 
anything with it he likes, it is a material for him to 
sketch with and play with — to record his fancies in, 
before they escape him — and to express roughly, for 
people who can enjoy such sketches, what he has not 
time to complete in marble. The clay, being ductile, 
lends itself to all softness of line ; being easily frangi- 
ble, it would be ridiculous to give it sharp edges, so 
that a blunt and massive rendering of graceful gesture 
will be its natural function ; but as it can be pinched, 
or pulled, or thrust in a moment into projection which 
it would take hours of chiselling to get in stone, it will 
also properly be used for all fantastic and grotesque 
form, not involving sharp edges. Therefore, what is 
true of chalk and charcoal, for painters, is equally true 
of clay, for sculptors ; they are all most precious mate- 
rials for true masters, but tempt the false ones into fatal 
license ; and to judge I'ightly of terra cotta work is a 
far higher reach of skill in sculpture-criticism than to 
distinguish the merits of a finished statue. — Aratra 
Pentelici, p. 100. 

The Tombs of the Doges Tomaso Mocenigo and 
Andrea Vendramin in Venice. — Like all the lovely 
tombs of Venice and Verona, it is a sarcophagus with a 
recumbent figure above, and this figure is a faithful but 
tender portrait, wrought as far as it can be without 
painfulness, of the doge as he lay in death. He wears 
his ducal robe and bonnet — his head is laid slightly 
aside upon his pillow — his hands are simply crossed as 
they fall. The face is emaciated, the features large, 
but so pure and lordly in their natural chiselling, that 
they must have looked like marble even in their anima- 
tion. They are deeply worn away by thought and 
death; the veins on the temples branched and starting; 
the skin gathered in sharp folds ; the brow high-arched 



172 A EUSKIN ANTHOLOGY, 

and shaggy : the eye-ball magnificently large ; the curve 
of the lips just veiled by the light moustache at the 
side ; the beard short, double, and sharp-pointed : all 
noble and quiet ; the vi^hite sepulchral dust marking like 
light the stern angles of the cheek and brow. . . . 

In the choir of the same church, St. Giov. and Paolo, 
is another tomb, that of the Doge Andrea Vendramin. 
This doge died in 1748, after a short reign of two 
years, the most disastrous in the annals of Venice. He 
died of a pestilence which followed the ravage of the 
Turks, carried to the shores of the lagoons. He died, 
leaving Venice disgraced by sea and land, with the 
smoke of hostile devastation rising in the blue distances 
of Friuli ; and there was raised to him the most costly 
tomb ever bestowed on her monarchs. 

The tomb is pronounced by Ciogndra "the very cul- 
minating point to which the Venetian arts attained by 
ministry of the chisel." 

To this culminating point, therefore, covered with 
dust and cobwebs, I attained, as I did to every tomb of 
importance in Venice, by the ministry of such ancient 
ladders as were to be found in the sacristan's keeping. 
I was struck at first by the excessive awkwardness and 
want of feeling in the fall of the hand towards the spec- 
tator, for it is thrown off the middle of the body in 
order to show its fine cutting. Now the Mocenigo 
hand, severe and even stiff in its articulations, has its 
veins finely drawn, its sculptor having justly felt that 
the delicacy of the veining expresses alike dignity and 
age and birth. The Vendramin hand is far more labori- 
ously cut, but its blunt and clumsy contour at once 
makes us feel that all the care has been thrown away, and 
well it may be, for it has been entirely bestowed in cut- 
ting gouty wrinkles about the joints. Such as the hand 
is, I looked for its fellow. At first I thought it had 
been broken off, but, on clearing away the dust, I saw 
the wretched effigy had only 07ie hand, and was a mere 
block on the inner side. The face, heavy and disagree- 
able in its features, is made monstrous by its semi- 
ficulpture. One side of the forehead is wrinkled elabo- 
rately, the other left smooth; one side only of the 
doge's cap is chased; one cheek only is finished, and 
the other blocked out and distorted besides ; finally, the 



SCULPTURE. 173 

ormine robe, which is elaborately imitated to its utmost 
lock of hair and of ground hair on the one side, is 
blocked out only on the other ; it having been supposed 
throughout the work that the effigy was only to be 
seen from below, and from one side. 

It was indeed to be so seen by nearly every one ; and I 
do not blame — I should, on the contrary, have praised — 
the sculptor for regulating his treatment of it by its 
position; if that treatment had not involved, first, dis- 
honesty, in giving only half a face, a monstrous mask, 
when we demanded true portraiture of the dead ; and, 
secondly, such utter coldness of feeling, as could only 
consist with an extreme of intellectual and moral degra- 
dation. Who, with a heart in his breast, could have 
stayed his hand as he drew the dim lines of the old 
man's countenance — unmajestic once, indeed, but at 
least sanctified by the solemnities of death — could have 
stayed his hand, as he reached the bend of the grey 
forehead, and measured out the last veins of it at so 
much the zecchin ? 

But now, reader, comes the very gist and point of 
the whole matter. This lying monument to a dishon- 
ored doge, this culminating pride of the Renaissance art 
of Venice, is at least veracious, if in nothing else, in its 
testimony to the character of its sculptor. lie was 
banished from Venice for forgery in 1187. — 
Stones of Venice, I., pp. 39-43. 

St. Mark's. — A sea-borne vase of alabaster full of 
incense of prayers ; and a purple manuscript — floor, 
walls, and roof blazoned with the scrolls of the gospel. 
— Deucalion, p. 84. 

A multitude of pillars and white domes, clustered in 
to a long low pyramid of colored light ; a treasure-heap, 
it seems, partly of gold, and partly of ("pal and mother- 
of-pearl, hollowed beneath into five great vaulted 
porches, ceiled with fair mosaic, and beset with sculpt- 
ure of alabaster, clear as amber and delicate as ivory, 
— sculpture fantastic and involved, of palm-leaves and 
lilies, and grapes and pomegnxnates, and birds clinging 
and fluttering among the branches, all twined together 
in an endless network of buds and plumes; and, in the 
midst of it, the solemn forms of angels, sceptred, and 



174 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

robed to the feet, and leaning to each other across the 
gates, their figures indistinct among the gleaming of the 
golden ground through the leaves beside them, inter- 
rupted and dim, like the morning light as it faded back 
among the branches of Eden, when first its gates were 
angel-guarded long ago. And round the walls of the 
porches tliei'e are set pillars of variegated stones, jas- 
per and porphyry, and deep-green serpentine spotted 
v/ith flakes of snow, and marbles, that iialf refuse and 
half yield to the sunshine, Cieopatra-like, " their bluest 
veins to kiss " — the shadow, as it steals back from them, 
revealing line after line of azure undulation, as a reced- 
ing tide leaves the waved sand ; their capitals rich with 
interwoven tracery, rooted knots of herbage, and drifting 
leaves of acanthus and vine, and mystical signs, all be- 
ginning and ending in the Cross ; and above them, in 
the broad archivolts, a continuous chain of language 
and of life — angels, and the signs of heaven, and the 
labors of men, each in its appointed season upon the 
earth ; and above these, another range of glittering pin- 
nacles, mixed with white arches edged with scarlet 
flowers — a confusion of delight, amidst which the 
breasts of the Greek horses are seen blazing in their 
breadth of golden strength, and the St. Mark's Lion, 
lifted on a blue-field covered with stars, until at last, as 
if in ecstasy, the crests of the arches break into a mar- 
ble foam, and toss themselves far into the blue sky in 
flashes and wreaths of sculptured spray, as if the break- 
ers on the Lido shore had been frost-bound before they 
fell, and the sea-nymphs had inlaid them with coral and 
amethyst. . . . 

The interior is lost in deep twilight, to which the 
eye must be accustomed for some moments before 
the form of the building can be traced ; and then there 
opens before us a vast cave, hewn out into the form of a 
Cross, and divided into shadowy aisles by many pillars. 
Round the domes of its roof the light enters only 
through narrow apertures like large stars; and here 
and there a ray or two from some far away casement 
wanders into the darkness, and casts a narrow phos- 
phoric stream upon the waves of marble that heave and 
fall in a thousand colors along the floor. What else 
there is of light is from torches, or silver lamps, burn- 



SCULPTURE. 175 

ing eoasolossly in the recesses of the chapels ; the roof 
slieeted with gold, and the polished walls covered with 
alabaster, give back at every curve and angle some fee- 
ble gleaming to the flames ; and the glories round the 
heads of the sculptured saints flash out upon us as we 
pass them, and sink again into the gloom. Under foot 
and over head, a continual succession of crowded im- 
agery, one picture passing into another, as in a dream ; 
forms beautiful and terrible mixed together ; dragons 
and serpents, and ravening beasts of prey, and graceful 
birds that in the midst of them drink from running 
fountains and f<^ed fr'om vases of crystal ; the passions 
and pleasures of human life symbolized together, and 
the mystery of its redemption ; for the mazes of inter- 
woven lines and changeful pictures lead always at last 
to the Cross, lifted and carved in every place and upon 
every stone. . . . 

The very first requisite for true judgment of St. 
Mark's, is the perfection of that color-faculty which 
few people ever set themselves seriously to find out, 
whether they possess or not. For it is on its value 
as a piece of perfect and unchangeable coloring, that 
the claims of this edifice to our respect are finally 
rested ; and a deaf man might as well pretend to pro- 
nounce judgment on the merits of a full orchestra, as 
an architect trained in the composition of form only, to 
discern the beauty of St. Mark's. . . . While the 
burghers and barons of the North were building their 
dark streets and grisly castles of oak and sandstone, the 
merchants of Venice were covering their palaces with 
porphyry and gold ; and at last, when her mighty paint- 
ers had created for her a color more priceless than gold 
or porphyry, even this, the richest of her treasures, she 
lavished upon walls whose foundations were beaten by 
the sea ; and the strong fide, as it runs beneath the 
Rialto, is reddened to this day by the reflection of the 
frescoes of Giorgione. 

The whole edifice is to be regarded less as a temple 
wherein to pray, than as itself a Book of Common 
Prayer, a vast illuminated missal, bound with alabaster 
instead of parchment, studded with porphyry pillars in- 
stead of jewels, and written within and without in 
letters of enamel and gold. . . . 



1T6 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

It would be easier to illustrate a crest of Scottish 
mountain, with its purple heather and pale harebells at 
their fullest and fairest, or a glade of Jura forest, with 
its floor of anemone and moss, than a single portico of 
St. Uark's.— Stones of Venice, II., pp. '70-98. 

It seems to me that the English visitor never realizes 
thoroughly what it is that he looks at in the St. Mark's 
porches: its glittering confusion in a style unexampled, 
its bright colors, its mingled marbles, produce on him 
no real impression of age, and its diminutive size 
sciircely any of grandeur. It looks to him almost like 
a stage-scene, got up solidly for some sudden festa. No 
mere guide-book's passing assertion of date — this cen- 
tury or the other — can in the least make him even con- 
ceive, and far less feel, that he is actually standing be- 
fore the very shafts and stones that were set on their 
foundations here while Harold the Saxon stood by the 
grave of the Confessor under the fresh-raised vaults of 
the first Norman Westminster Abbey, of which now a 
single arch only remains standing. He cannot, by any 
effort, imagine that those exquisite and lace-like sculpt- 
ures of twined acanthus — every leaf-edge as sharp 
and fine as if they were green weeds fresh springing in 
the dew, by the Pan-droseion — were, indeed, cut and 
finished to their perfect grace while the Norman axes 
were hewing out rough zigzags and dentils round the 
aisles of Durham and Lindisfarne. . . . Beyond all 
measure of value as a treasury of art, it is also, beyond 
all our other volumes, venerable as a codex of religion. 
Just as the white foliage and birds on their golden 
ground are descendants, in direct line, from the ivory 
and gold of Phidias, so the Greek pictures and inscrip- 
tions, whether in mosaic or in sculpture, throughout 
the building, record the unbroken unity of spiritual in- 
fluence from the Father of Light — or the races whose 
own poets had said " We also are his offspring" — down 
to the day when all their gods, not slain, but changed into 
new creatures, became the types to them of the mightier 
Christian spirits; and Perseus became St. George, and 
Mars St. Michael, and Athena the Madonna, and Zeus 
their revealed Father in Heaven. 

In all the history of human mind, there is nothing so 



SCULPTURE. 177 

wonderful, nothing so eventful, as this spiritual change. 
So inextricably is it interwoven with the most divine, 
the most distant threads of human thought and effort, 
that v.'hile none of the thoughts of St. Paul or the vis- 
ions of St. John can be understood without our under- 
standing first the imagery familiar to the Pagan wor- 
ship of the Greeks ; on the other hand, no understand- 
ing of the real purport of Greek religion can be securely 
reached without watching the translation of its myths 
into the message of Christianity. — Arroics of the 
Chace, I., pp. 158, 159. 

Throughout the whole fagade of St. Mark's, the capi- 
tals have only here and there by casualty lost so much 
as a volute or an ancanthus leaf, and whatever remains 
is perfect as on the day it was set in its place, mel- 
lowed and subdued only in color by time, but white 
still, clearly white ; and gray, still softly gray ; its 
porphyry purple as an Orleans plum, and the serpentine 
as green as a greengage. Note alf-o, that in this through- 
out perfect decorated surface there is not a loose joint. 
— Arrows of the Chace, II., p. 163. 



PART II. 

SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 



" Some treasures are heavy with human tears, as an ill' 
stored harvest ivith untimely rain." 

RusKiN, "Unto This Last," p. 39. 

"Unless opinions favorable to democracy and to aristoc- 
racy, to property and to equality, to cooperation and to 
competition, to luxury and to abstenence, to sociality and 
to individuality, to liberty and discipline, and all the 
other standing antagonisms of practical life, are expressed 
with equal freedom, and enforced and defended toith equal 
talent and energy, there is no chalice of both elements ob- 
taining their due." 

John Stoart Mill. 



A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 



PART II.— SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 



CHAPTER I. 

Ecois^oMic Canons. 

Political Economy is not itself a science, but a 
system of conduct founded on the sciences, and 
impossible, except under certain conditions of moral 
culture. Which is only to say, that industry, 
frugality, and discretion, the three foundations of 
economy, are moral qualities, and cannot be at- 
tained without moral discipline: a flat truism, the 
reader may think, thus stated, yet a truism which 
is denied both vociferously, and in all endeavor, by 
the entire populace of Europe ; who are at present 
hoi:>eful of obtaining wealth by tricks of trade, with- 
out industry. 

The study which lately in England has been called 
Political Economy is in reality nothing more than 
the investigation of some accidental phenomena of 
modern commercial operations, nor has it been 
true in its investigation even of these. — Mimera 
Fiilveris, p. 11, 19. 

Among the delusions which at different periods 
have possessed themselves of the minds of large 
masses of the human race, perhaps the most curious 
— certainly the least creditable — is the modern soi- 
disant science of political economy, based on the 
idea that an advantageous code of social action naay 
be determined irrespectively of the influence of 
social affection. 

Observe, I neither impugn nor doubt the conclu- 

(181) 



182 A liUSKIJSr ANTHOLOGY. 

sions of the science, if its terms are accepted. I aiu 
simjily uninterested in them, as I should be in tliose 
of a science of gymnastics which assumed that men 
had no skeletons. It might be shown, on that 
supposition, that it would be advantageous to roll 
the students up into pellets, flatten them into cakes, 
or stretch them into cables ; and that when these 
results were effected, the re-insertion of the skeleton 
would be attended with various inconveniences to 
their constitution. The reasoning might be admir- 
able, the conclusions true, and the science deficient 
only in aiJijlicability. Modern political economy 
stands on a precisely similar basis. Assuming, not 
that the human being has no skeleton, but that it 
is all skeleton, it founds an ossifiant theory of j^ro- 
gress on this negation of a soul ; and having shown 
the utmost that may be made of bones, and con- 
structed a number of interesting geometrical figures 
with death's-heads and humeri, successfully proves 
the inconvenience of the reappearance of a soul 
among these corpuscular structures. I do not deny 
the truth of this the»ory : I simply deny its applica- 
bility to the present phase of the world. — U7ito This 
Last, p. 14. 

The real science of political economy, which has 
yet to be distinguished from the bastard science, as' 
medicine from witchcraft, and astronomy from as- 
trology, is that which teaches nations to desire and 
labor for the things that lead to life ; and which 
teaches them to scorn and destroy the things that 
lead to destruction. — Unto This Last, p. 66. 

Political economy (the economy of a State, or of 
citizens) consists simply in the production, preserva- 
tion, and distribution, at fittest time and place, of 
useful or pleasurable things. The farmer who cuts 
his hay at the right time ; the shipwright who 
drives his bolts well home in sound wood ; the 
builder who lays good bricks in well-tempered mor- 
tar ; the housewife who takes care of her furniture 
in the parlor, and guards against all waste in her 
kitchen ; and the singer who rightly disciplines, and 



SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 183 

never overstrains her voice : are all political econo- 
mists in the true and final sense ; adding continu- 
ally to the riches and well-being of the nation to 
which they belong. 

But mercantile economy, the economy of "jnerces" 
or of "pay," signifies the accunn;lation, in the 
hands of individuals, of legal or moral claim upon, 
or power over, the labor of others ; every such 
claim implying precisely as much poverty or debt 
on one side, as it implies riches or right on the other. 
It does not, therefore, necessarily involve an addi- 
tion to the actual property, or well-being, of the 
State in which it exMs.— Unto Tliis Last, p. 33. 

The Production of Good Mex axd Women 
THE OB.JECT OB^ True ECONOMY.— This is the ob- 
ject of all true policy and true economy : " utmost 
multitude of good men on every given space of 
ground" — impei-atively always, good, sound, honest 
men, not a mob of white-faced thieves. — Athena, 
p.Ul. 

A little group of wise hearts is better than a wil- 
derness full of fools.— CrotWi of Wild Olive, Lect. 
III., p. 83. 

It is strange that men always praise enthusiasti- 
cally any person who, by a momentary exertion, 
saves a life ; but praise very hesitatingly a person 
who, by exertion and self-denial prolonged through 
years, creates one. We give the crown " ob civem 
servatum ; '' — Avhy not " ob civem natum ? " Born, 
I mean, to the full, in sovil as well as body. Eng- 
land has oak enough, I think, for both chaplets. — 
Unto This Last, p. 77. 

The Function of Labor in National Life.— 
It is physically impossible that true religious knowl- 
edge, or pure morality, should exist among any 
classes of a nation who do not Avork with their 
hands for their bread.— i^o?-.S', III., p. 349. 

A Money-Making Mob.— A nation cannot last as 
a money-making mob : it cann'>t with impunity,— 
it cannot with existence.— goon despising literature. 



184 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

despising science, despising art, despising nature, 
despising compassion, and concentrating its soul on 
Pence. — Sesame and Lilies, p. 54. 

Vitality and Decay in Nations. — The customs 
and manners of a sensitive and highly-trained 
race are always Vital : that is to say, they are or- 
derly manifestations of intense life, like the habitual 
action of the fingers of a musician. The customs 
and manners of a vile and rude race, on the con- 
trary, are conditions of decay : they are not, prop- 
erly speaking, habits, but incrustations ; not re- 
straints, or forms of life ; but gangrenes, noisome, 
and the beginnings of death. — Munera Pulderis, 
p. 1)0. 

" An Honest Man is the Noblest Work of 
God." — I have sometimes heard Pope condemned for 
the lowness, instead of the height of his standard : — 
" Honesty is indeed a respectable virtue ; but how 
much higher may uien attain ! Shall nothing more 
be asked of us than that we be honest? " 

For the present, good friends, nothing. It seems 
that in our aspirations to be more than that, we 
have to some extent lost sight of the propriety of be- 
ing so much as that. — Unto This Last, p. 7. 

Whenever in my writings on Political Economy, I 
assume that a little honesty or generosity, — or what 
used to be called " virtue" — may be calculated up- 
on as a human motive of action, people always 
answer me, saying, "You must not calculate on 
that: that is not in human nature: you must not 
assume anything to be common to men but acquisi- 
tiveness and jealousy ; no other feeling ever has 
influence on them, except accidentally, and in mat- 
ters out of the way of business." — Sesame and 
Lilies, p. 30. 

Fight — Avill you ? — and pull other people's houses 
down ; while I am to be set to build your liarracks, 
that you may go smoking and spitting about all 
day, with a cock's conjb on your head, and spurs to 
your heels? — (1 observe, by the Avay, the Italian 



SOCIAL rniLOSOPHY. 185 

soldiers have now got cocks' tai/s on their heads, 
instead of cocks' com1>s.) — Lay down the law to me 
in a wi|?,— will you? and tell nie the house I have 
built is — XOT niineV and take luy dinner from 
me, as a fee for that opinion ? Build, my man, — 
build, or dig, — one of the two ; and then eat your 
honestly earned meat, thankfully, and let other 
people alone, if you can't telp them.— i^'or.^, II., 
p. 300. 

DKFixiTloy'OP Currency. — The currency of any 
countrj^ consists of every document acknowledging 
debt, which is transferable in the countr}\ — Munera 
Palmris, p. 59. 

iNFLATlOJf OF C URREXCY.— The Government may 
at any time, with i^erfect justice, double Its issue of 
coinage, if it gives every man who had ten pounds 
in his pocket, another ten jjounds, and every man 
who had ten pence, another ten i)ence ; for it thus 
does not make any of them richer ; it merely di- 
vides their counters for them into twice the number. 
But if it gives the newly-issued coins to other people, 
or keeps them itself, it simply robs the former hold- 
ers to jjreeisely that extent. — AtJiena, p. 93. 

If ten men are cast away on a rock, with a thou- 
sand pounds in their pockets, and there is on the 
rock neither food nor shelter, their money is worth 
simply nothing ; for nothing is to be had for it : if 
they build ten huts, and recover a cask of biscuit 
from the wreck, then their thousand pounds, at its 
maximum value, is Avorth ten huts and a cask of 
biscuit. If they make their thousand pounds into 
two thousand by writing new notes, their two thou- 
sand pounds are still only Avortli ten huts and a 
cask of hiseuit.—Athe7ia, p. 91. 

The lowered value of money is often (and this is a 
very curious case of economical back current) indi- 
Ccited, not so much by a rise in the price of goods, as 
by a fall in that of labor. The household lives as 
comfortably as it did on a hundred a year, but the 
master has to work half as hard again to get it. 
This increase of toil is to an active nation often a 



iS(j A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

kind of phiy ; men go into it as into a violent game ; 
fatliers of families die quicker, and the gates of or- 
phan asylums are choked with applicants ; distress 
and crime spread and fester through a thousand 
silent channels ; but there is no commercial or ele- 
mentary convulsion ; no chasm opens into the abyss 
through the London clay ; no gilded victim is asked 
of the Guards : the Stock-Exchange falls into no 
hysterics ; and the old lady of Threadneedle street 
does not so much as ask for "My fan, Peter." — 
Arrows of the Chace, II., p. 45. 

Gold Coin.— Every bit of gold found in Australia, 
so long as it remains uncoined, is an article offered 
for sale like any other ; but as soon as it is coined 
into pounds, it diminishes the value of every pound 
we have now in our pockets. 

The Avaste of labor in obtaining the gold, though 
it cannot be estimated by help of any existing data, 
may be understood in its bearing on entire economy 
by supposing it limited to transactions between tAvo 
persons. If two farmers in Australia have been ex- 
changing corn and cattle with each other for yearr., 
keei:)ing their accounts of reciprocal debt in any 
simple way, the sum of the possessions of either 
would not be diminished, though the part of it 
which was lent or borroAved Avere only reckoned by 
marks on a stone, or notches on a tree ; and the 
one counted himself accordingly, so many scratches, 
or so many notches, better than the other. But it 
Avould soon be seriously diminished if, discoA'ering 
gold in their fields, each resoh^ed only to accept 
golden counters for a reckoning ; and accordingly, 
whenever he Avanted a sack of corn or a cow, Avas 
obliged to go and wash sand for a Aveek before he 
could get the means of giving a receijDt for them. — 
Munera Pulveris, pp. 60, 63. 

The Nature of Intrinsic Value. — Intrinsic 
A'alue is the absolute power of anything to support 
life. A sheaf of Avheat of giA''en quality and Aveight 
has in it a measurable power of sustaining the sub- 
stance of the body ; a cubic foot of pure air a fixed 



SOCIAL PEILOSOrffT. 187 

power of sustaining its warmth ; and a cluster of 
llowers of p:iven beauty a fixed power of enlivening 
or animating the senses and heart. — Mimera Pul- 
otris, p. 24. 

The economist, in saying that his science takes no 
account of the qualities of pictures, merely signifies 
that he cannot conceive of any quality of essential 
badness or goodness existing in i^ictures ; and that 
he is incapable of investigating the laws of wealth 
in such articles. Which is the fact. But, being in- 
capable of defining intrinsic value in pictures, it 
follows that he must be equally helpless to define 
the nature of intrinsic value in painted glass, or in 
painted pottery, or in patterned stuffs, or in any 
other national produce requiring true huiuan in- 
genuity. Nay, though capable of conceiving the 
idea of intrinsic value with respect to beasts of bur- 
den, no economist has endeavored to state the gen- 
eral principles of National Economy, even with 
regard to the horse or the ass. And, in fine, the 
modern political economists have been, without ex- 
ception, incapable of apprehending the nature of 
intrinsic value at all- 

When, in the winter of 1851, I was collecting ma- 
terials for my work on Venetian architecture, three 
of the pictures of Tintoret on the roof of the School 
of St. Roch were hanging down in ragged fragments, 
mixed with lath and plaster, round the apertures 
made by the fall of three Austrian heavy shot. The 
city of Venice was not, it appeared, rich enough to 
repair the damage that winter ; and buckets were 
set on the floor of the upper room of the school to 
catch the rain, which not only fell directly through 
the shot holes, but found its way, owing to the gen- 
erally pervious state of the roof, through many of 
the canvases of Tintoret's in other parts of the 
ceiling. 

It was a lesson to me, as I have just said, no less 
direct than severe ; for I knew already at that time 
(though I have not ventured to assert, until recently 
at Oxford,) that tlie pictures of Tintoret in Venice 
were accurately the most precious articles of wealth 



188 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

ill Euroije, being the best existing productions of 
human industry. Now at the time that three of 
them were thus fluttering in moist rags from the 
roof they had adorned, the shops of the Rue Rivoli 
at Paris were, in obedience to a steadily-increasing 
public Demand, beginning to show a steadily-in- 
creasing Supply of elaborately-finished and colored 
(ithograjDhs, representing the modern dances of de- 
light, among which the cancan has since taken a 
ilistinguished place. 

The labor employed on the stone of one of these 
lithograiihs is very much more than Tintoret was in 
the habit of giving to a liicture of average size. 
Considering labor as the origin of value, therefore, 
the stone so highly wrought would be of greater 
value than the picture ; and since also it is capable 
of producing a large number of immediately salea- 
ble or exchangeable impressions, for which the 
"demand" is constant, the city of Paris naturally 
supposed itself, and on all hitherto believed or 
stated principles of political economy, was, infi- 
nitely richer in the possession of a large number of 
these lithographic stones, (not to speak of countless 
oil pictures and marble carvings of similar char- 
acter), than Venice in the possession of those rags of 
mildewed canvas, flaunting in the south Avind and 
its salt rain. And, accordingly, Paris provided 
(without thought of the expense) lofty arcades of 
shops, and rich recesses of innumerable private 
apartments, for the protection of these better treas- 
ures of hers from the weather. 

Yet, all the while, Paris was not the richer for 
these jjossessions. Intrinsically, the delightful lith- 
ographs were not wealth, but polar contraries of 
wealth. She was, by the exact quantity of labor 
she had given to jiroduce these, sunk below, instead 
of above, absolute Poverty. They not only were 
false Riches— they were true Debt, Avhich had to be 
paid at last— and the present aspect of the Rue 
Rivoli shows in what manner. 

And the faded stains of the Venetian ceiling, all 
the while, were absolute and inestimable wealth. 



SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY— ECONOMIC CANONS. 189 

Useless to their possessors as forgotten treasure in 
a buried city, they had in them, nevertheless, the 
intrinsic and eternal nature of wealth; and Venice, 
still possessing the ruins of them, was a rich city; 
only, the Venetians had not a notion sufficiently 
correct even for the very common purpose of in- 
ducing them to put slates on a roof, of what was 
"meant hy yveei\th."—Munei-a Puloeris, pp. 6-8. 



WEALTH. 

Wealth is the possession of the valuable by 
THE VALIANT.— C/wto This Last, p. 69. 

The study of Wealth is a pi'ovince of natural 
science : — it deals with the essential properties of 
things. 

The study of Money is a province of commercial 
science :— it deals v,^ith conditions of engagement 
and exchange. 

The study of Riches is a province of moral sci- 
ence : — it deals with the due relations of men to 
each other in regard of material possessions: and 
with the just laws of their association for purjposes 
of labor. — Munera Pulveris, p. 24. 

One mass of money is the outcome of action which 
has created, — another, of action which has annihi- 
lated, — ten times as much in the gathering of it; 
such and such strong hands have been paralyzed, 
as if they had been numbed by nightshade; so 
many strong men's courage broken, so many pro- 
ductive operations hindered; this and the other 
false direction given to labor, and lying image of 
prosperity set vip, on Dura plains dug into seven- 
tiuies-heated furnaces. That which seems to be 
wealth may in verity be only the gilded index of 
fai'-reaching ruin; a wrecker's handful of coin 
gleaned from the beach to which he has beguiled 
an argosy; a camp-follower's bundle of rags un- 
wrapped from the breasts of goodly soldiers dead; 
the [)urchase-pieces of potter's fields, wherein shall 



190 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

be buried together the citizen and the stranger. — 
Unto This Last, p. 39. 

There is ko WsAiiTH but Life.— Life, inchiding 
all its po Avers of love, of joy, and of admiration. 
That country is the richest which nourishes the 
greatest number of noble and happy human be- 
ings; that man is richest who, having perfected the 
functions of his own life to the utmost, has also 
the widest helpful influence, both personal, and by 
means of his possessions, over the lives of others. — 
U7ito This Last, p. 83. 

The True Veins of Wealth.— Since the essence 
of wealth consists in power over men, will it not 
follow that the nobler and the more in number the 
persons are over whom it has power, the greater 
the wealth ? Perhaps it may even appear after 
some consideration, that the persons themselves 
are the wealth — that these pieces of gold with which 
we are in the habit of guiding them, ai'e, in fact, 
nothing more than a kind of Byzantine harness or 
trappings, very glittering and beautiful in barbaric 
sight, wherewith we bridle the creatures; but that 
if these same living creatures could be guided with- 
out the fretting and jingling of the Byzants in their 
mouths and ears, they might themselves be more 
valuable than their bridles. In fact, it may be dis- 
covered that the true veins of wealth are purple^ 
and not in Rock, but in Flesh— perhaps even that 
the final outcome and consummation of all wealth 
is in the producing as many as possible full- 
breathed, bright-eyed, and happy-hearted human 
creatures. — Unto This Last, p. 41. 

Wealth as Power.— Since the essence of wealth 
consists in its authority over men, if the apparent 
or nominal wealth fail in this power, it fails in es- 
sence; in fact, ceases to be wealth at all. It does 
not appear lately in England, that our authority 
over men is absolute. The servants show some dis- 
position to rush riotously upstairs, under an im- 
pression that their wages are not regularly paid. 
We should augur ill of any gentleman's projjerty 



SOCIAL rniLO SOPHY— ECONOMIC CANONS. IGl 

to whom this happened every other day in his 
drawing-room. 

So also, the power of our wealth seems limited as 
respects the comfort of the servants, no less than 
their quietude. The persons in the kitchen appear 
to be ill-dressed, squalid, half-starved. One cannot 
help imagining that the riches of the establishment 
must be of a very theoretical and documentary 
character. — Unto This Last, p. 41. 



LABOR. 

The beginning of all good law, and nearly the 
end of it, is in these two ordinances,— That every 
man shall do good work for his bread; and sec- 
ondly, That every man shall have good bread for 
his work. — Fors, I., p. 141. 

To succeed to my own satisfaction in a manual 
piece of work, is life, — to me, as to all men; and it 
is only the i^eace which comes necessarily from 
manual labor which in all time has kept the hon- 
est country people patient in their task of main- 
taining the i-ascals who live in towns. — Fors, II,, 
p. 306. 

Labor is the contest of the life of man Avith an 
opposite. Literally, it is the quantity of " Lapse," 
loss, or failure of human life, caused by any effort. 
It is usually confused with effort itself, or the appli- 
cation of power (opera); but there is much effort 
which is merely a mode of recreation, or of pleas- 
ure. The most beautiful actions of the human 
body, and the highest results of the human intelli- 
gence, are conditions, or achievements, of quite un- 
laborious, — nay, of recreative, — effort. But labor 
is the suffering in effort. It is the negative quan- 
tity, or quantity of de-feat, which has to be counted 
against every Feat, and of defect which has to be 
counted against every Fact, or Deed of men. In 
brief, it is " that quantity of our toil which we die 
in." — Mtmera Fuloeris, p. 49. 



192 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

There is one fixed idea in the mind of every Euro- 
pean progressive poHtician, at this time; namely, 
that by a certain apphcation of Financial Art, and 
by the erection of a certain quantity of new build- 
ings on a colossal scale, it will be possible for soci- 
ety hereafter to pass its entire life in eating, smok- 
ing, harlotry, and talk; without doing anything 
whatever with its hands or feet of a laborious char- 
acter.— For^, II., p. 236. 

A happy nation may be defined as one in which 
the husband's hand is on the i^lough, and the house- 
wife's on the needle; so in due time reaping its 
golden harvest, and shining in golden vesture : 
and an unhappy nation is one which, acknowledg- 
ing no use of plough nor needle, will assuredly at 
last find its storehouse empty in the famine, and its 
breast naked to the cold.— The Two Paths, p. 121. 

Good Work ill-paid or not taid at all.— 
Generally, good, useful work, whether of the hand 
or head, is either ill-paid, or not paid at all. I 
don't say it should be so, but it always is so. Peo- 
ple, as a rule, only pay for being amused or being 
cheated, not for being served. Five thousand a 
year to your talker, and a shilling a day to your 
fighter, digger, and thinker, is the rule. None of 
the best head work in art, literature, or science, is 
ever paid for. How much do you think Homer got 
for his Iliad ? or Dante for his Paradise ? only bitter 
bread and salt, and going up and down other peo- 
ple's stairs. — Crown of Wild Olive, Lect. II., p. 35. 

Wages not always determined by Competi- 
tion. — I pay my servants exactly what wages I 
think necessary to make them comfortable. The 
sum is not determined at all by competition; but 
sometimes by my notions of their comfort and de- 
serving, and sometimes by theirs. If I were to be- 
come penniless to-morrow, several of them would 
certainly still serve me for nothing. 

In both the real and supposed cases the so-called 
"law " of vulgar ijolitical economy is absolutely set 
at defiance. But I cannot set the law of gravita- 



SOCIAL PniLOSOrHY— ECONOMIC CANON'S. 193 

tiou at defiance, nor determiue that in my house I 
will not allow ice to melt, when the temperature is 
above thirty-two degrees. A true law outside of 
my house, will remain a true one inside of it. It is 
not, therefore, a law of Nature that wages are de- 
termined by competition. — Munera Pulveris-, p. 10. 

Employmkxts. — There being three great classes of 
mechanical powers at our disposal, namely («) vital 
or muscular power; (&) natural mechanical power 
of wind, water, and electricity; and (e) artificially 
produced mechanical power, it is the first princi- 
ple of economy to use all available vital power 
first, then the inexpensive natural forces, and only 
at last to have recourse to artificial jjower. And 
this, because it is always better for a man to work 
with his own hands to feed and clothe himself, than 
to stand idle while a machine works for him; and 
if he cannot, by all the labor healthily possible to 
him, feed and clothe himself, then it is better to use 
an inexpensive machine — as a windmill or Avater- 
mill — than a costly one like a steam-engine, so long 
as we have natural force enough at our disposal. 
. . . The principal point of all to be kept in view 
is, that in every idle arm and shoulder throughout 
the country there is a certain quantity of force, 
equivalent to the force of so much fuel; and that 
it is mere insane waste to dig for coal for our force, 
while the vital force is unused; and not only un- 
used, but, in being so, corrui^ting and polluting 
itself. We waste our coal, and sjjoil our humanity 
at one and the same instant. . . . Then, in employ- 
ing all the muscular power at our disposal we are 
to make the employments we choose as educational 
as possible. For a wholesome human employment 
is the first and best method of education, mental as 
well as bodily. 

The next great principle of employment is, that 
whenever there is pressure of poverty to be met, all 
enforced occupation should be directed to the pro- 
duction of useful articles only, that is to say, of 
food, of simple clothing, of lodging, or of the means 



194 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

of conveying, distributing, and preserving these. 
. . . Men cannot live on ribands, or buttons, or 
velvets, or by going quickly from place to place; 
and every coin spent in useless ornament, or use- 
less motion, is so much withdrawn from the na- 
tional means of life. One of the most beautiful 
uses of railroads is to enable A to travel from the 
town of X to take away the business of B in the 
town of Y; while, in the meantime, B travels from 
the town of Y to take away A's business in the town 
of X. But the national wealth is not increased by 
these operations. . . . 

And lasth^: Since for every idle person, some one 
else must be working somewhere to provide him 
with clothes and food, and doing, therefore, double 
the quantity of work that would be enough for his 
own needs, it is only a matter of pure justice to 
compel the idle person to work for his maintenance 
himself. — Athena, pp. 9G-99. 



RICHES. 

The first of all English games is making money. 
That is an all-absorbing game; and we knock each 
other down oftener in playing at that than at foot- 
ball, or any other roughest sport; and it is abso- 
lutely without purpose; no one who engages heart- 
ily in that game ever knows why. — Croion of Wild 
Olive, Lect. I., p. 21. 

And I can tell you, the poor vagrants by the road- 
side suffer now quite as mvich from the bag-baron, 
as ever they did from the crag-baron. Bags and 
crags have just the same result on rags. — Croivn of 
Wild Olive, Lect. I., p. 39. 

The guilty Thieves of Europe, the real sources of 
all deadly war in it, are the Capitalists — that is to 
say, people who live by percentages on the labor of 
others; instead of by fair wages for their own. — 
Fors, I., p. 97. 

For, during the last eight hundred years, the up- 
per classes of Europe have been one large Picnic 



SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY— ECONOMIC CANONS. 195 

Party. Most of tlieiu liave been religious also; and 
in sitting clown, by companies, upon the green 
grass, in parks, gardens, and the like, have con- 
sidered themselves commanded into that position 
by Divine authority, and fed with bread from 
Heaven : of which they duly considered it proper 
to bestow the fragments in support, and the tithes 
in tuition, of the poor. — Fors, I., p. 25. 

There will be always a number of men who Avould 
fain set themselves to the accumulation of wealth 
as the sole object of their lives. Necessarily, that 
class of men is an uneducated class, inferior in in- 
tellect, and more or less cowardly. It is physically 
impossible for a well-educated, intellectual, or 
brave man to make money the chief object of his 
thoughts; as physically impossible as it is for him 
to make his dinner the principal object of them. — 
Crown of Wild Olive, Lect. I., p. 26. 

There is a working class — strong and happy— 
among both rich and poor; there is an idle class — 
weak, Avicked, and miserable — among both rich and 
poor. And the worst of the misunderstandings 
arising between the two orders come of the unlucky 
fact that the wise of one class habitually contem- 
plate the foolish of the oilxer.— Crown of Wild Olivet 
Lect. I., p. 19. 

Lowly Pleasures.— What is chiefly 'aeeded in 
England at the present day is to show the quan- 
tity of jileasure that may be obtained by a con- 
sistent, Avell-administered competence, modest, con- 
fessed, and laborious. We need examples of people 
who, leaving Heaven to decide whether they are to 
rise in the world, decide for themselves that they 
will be happy in it, and have resolved to seek — not 
greater wealth, but simpler pleasure; not higher 
fortune, but deeper felicity; making the first of 
possessions, self-possession; and honoring them- 
selves in the harmless pride and calm pursuits of 
peace. — Unto This Last, p. 89. 

Money is a strange kind of seed; scattered, it is 
poison; but set, it is bread: so that a man M'hom 



196 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

God has appointed to be a sower must bear as 
lightly as he may the burden of gold and of pos- 
sessions, till he find the proper places to sow them 
in.— Fors, III., p. 124. 

Inequalities of Wealth. — As diseased local de- 
termination of the blood involves depression ol' 
the general health of the system, all morbid local 
action of riches will be found ultimately to involve 
a weakening of the resources of the body politic. — 
Unto This Last, p. 35. 

Inequalities of wealth justly established, "benefit 
the nation in the course of their establishment; 
and, nobly used, aid it yet more by their existence. 
That is to say, among every active and well-gov- 
erned people, the various strength of individuals, 
tested by full exertion and specially applied to vari- 
ous need, issues in unequal, but harmonious results, 
receiving reward or authority according to its class 
and service; while in the inactive or ill-governed 
nation, the gradations of decay and the victories 
of treason work out also their own rugged systen 
of subjection and success: and substitute, for the 
melodious inequalities of concurrent power, the in- 
iquitous dominances and depressions of guilt and 
misfortune. — Unto TJiis Last, p. 38. 

AVhkre does the Rich Man get his Means of 
Living? — Well, for the point in question then, as 
to means of living : the most exemplary manner of 
answer is simply to state how I got my own, or 
rather how my father got them for me. lie and his 
partners entered into Avhat your cori-espondent 
mellifluously styles "a mutually benf'ficent part- 
nership," with certain laborers in Spain. These 
laborers produced from the earth annually a cer- 
tain number of bottles of wine. These productions 
were sold by my father and his partners, who kept 
nine-tenths, or thereabouts, of the price themselves, 
and gave one-tenth, or thereabouts, to the laborers. 
In whicli state of nnitual beneficeiice my father and 
his partners naturally became rich, and the laborers 
as naturally remained poor. Then my good father 



SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY— ECONOMIC CANONS. 197 

gave all his money to me (who never did a stroke 
of work in my life worth my salt, not to mention 
my dinner).— Arrotos of the Chace, II., p. 73. 

Money A^^D its Uses. — You will find that wher- 
ever and Avhenever men are endeavoring to make 
money hastily, and to avoid the labor which Prov- 
idence has appointed to be the only source of hon- 
orable profit; — and also wherever and whenever 
they permit themselves to spend it luxuriously, 
without reflecting how far they are misguiding the 
lal)or of others; — there and then, in either case, 
they are literally and infallibly causing, for their 
own benefit or their own pleasure, a certain annual 
number of human deaths; that, therefore, the choice 
given to every man born into this world is, simply, 
Avhether he will be a laborer or an assassin; and 
that whosoever has not his hand on the Stilt of the 
plough, has it on the Ililt of the dagger. — The Two 
Paths, p. 130. 

The Upper Classes.— The upper classes, broad- 
ly speaking, are always originally composed of 
the best-bred (in the merely animal sense of the 
term), the most energetic, and most thoughtful, of 
the population, who either by strength of arm 
seize the land from the rest, and make slaves of 
them, or bring desert laud into cultivation, over 
Avhich they have therefore, within certain limits, 
true personal right; or by industry, accumulate 
other i^roperty, or by choice devote themselves to 
intellectual pursuits, and, though poor, obtain an 
acknowledged sui:)eriority of position, shown by 
benefits conferred in discovery, or in teaching, or 
in gifts of art. This"is all in the simple course of 
the law of nature. . . . 

The office of the upper classes, then, as a body, is 
to keep order among their inferiors, and raise them 
always to the nearest level with themselves of which 
those inferiors are capable. So far as they are thus 
occupied, they are invariably loved and reverenced 
intensely by all beneath them, and reach, them- 
selves, the highest types of human power and 
beauty. — Time and Tide, pp. 93, 94. 



198 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

How far is it lawful to suck a portion of the soul 
out of a great many persons, in order to put the ab- 
stracted psychical quantities together, and make 
one very beautiful or ideal soul ? . . . We live, 
we gentlemen, on delicatest prey, after the manner 
of weasels ; that is to say, we keep a certain num- 
ber of clowns digging and ditching, and generally 
stupefied, in order that we, being fed gratis, may 
have all the thinking and feeling to ourselves. Yet 
there is a great deal to be said for this. A highly 
bred and trained English, French, Austrian or Ital- 
ian gentleman (mvich more a lady) is a great pro- 
duction ; a better j^roduction than most statues ; 
being beautifully colored as well as shaped, and 
plus all the brains ; a glorious thing to look at, a 
wonderful thing to talk to ; and you cannot have 
it, any more than a pyramid or a church, but by 
sacrifice of much contributed life. And it is, per- 
haps, better to build a beautiful human creature 
than a beautiful dome or steeple, and more delight- 
ful to look xip reverently to a creature far above 
us, than to a wall ; only the beautiful human crea- 
ture will have some duties to do in return — duties 
Df living belfry and raujpart. — Sesame and Lilies, 
p. 53. 

The Opportunities and Power of the Rich.— 
You may stretch out your sceptre over the heads of 
the English laborers, and say to them, as they stoop 
to its waving, " Subdue this obstacle that has baffled 
our fathers; put away this plague that consumes 
our children ; water these dry places, plough these 
desert ones; carry this food to those who are in 
hunger ; carry this light to those who are in dark- 
ness ; carry this life to those who are in death ; " or 
on the other side you may say to her laborers : 
"Here am I; this power is in my hand; come, 
build a mound here for me to be throned upon, high 
and wide ; come, make crowns for my head, that 
men may see them shine from far away ; come, 
weave tapestries for my feet, that I may tread softly 
on the silk and purple; come, dance before me, that 
I may be gay; and sing sweetly to me, that I may 



SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY— ECONOMIC CANONS. 109 

slumber; so shall I live in joy, and die in honor." 
And better than such an honorable death, it were 
that the day had perished wherein we were born, 
and the night in which it was said, There is a child 
conceived.— J. Joy For Ever, p. 83. 

It is nothing to give pension and cottage to the 
widow who has lost her son; it is nothing to give 
food and medicine to the workman who has broken 
his arm, or the decrepit woman wasting in sickness. 
But it is something to use your time and strength 
to war with the waywardness and thoughtlessness 
of mankind; to keej:) the erring workman in your 
service till you have niade him an unerring one; 
and to direct your fellow-merchant to the oppor- 
tunity which his dulness would have lost.— ^ Joi 
For Ever, pp. 81, 82. 

You would be indignant if you saw a strong man 
walk into a theatre or a lecture-room, and, calndy 
choosing tlie best place, take his feeble neighbor by 
the shoulder, and tvirn him out of it into the back 
seats, or the street. You would be equally indig- 
nant if you saw a stout fellow thrust himself up to 
a table where some hungry children Avere being fed, 
and reach his arm over their heads and take their 
bread from them. But you are not the least indig- 
nant if when a man has stoutness of thought and 
swiftness of capacity, and, instead of being long- 
armed only, has the much greater gift of being 
long-headed— you think it perfectly just that he 
should use his intellect to take the bread out of the 
mouths of all the other men in the town who are of 
the same trade with him; or use his breadth and 
sweep of sight to gather some branch of the com- 
merce of the country into one great cobweb, of 
which he is himself to be the central spider, making 
every thread vibrate with the points of his claws, 
and commanding every avenue with the facets of 
his eyes. You see no injustice in this. 

But there is injustice; and, let us trust, one of 
which honorable men will at no very distant period 
disdain to be guilty.— J. Joy For Ever, pp. 80, 81. 



200 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY, 

Advicr to Rich Wordlixqs — Is the earth only 
an hospital ? Play, if you care to play, on the floor 
of the hospital dens. Knit its straw into what 
crowns i^lease you; gather the dust of it for treas- 
ure, and die rich in that, clutching at the black 
motes in the air Avith your dying hands; — and yet, 
it may be well with you. But if this life be no 
dream, and the world no hospital; if all the peace 
and power and joy you can ever win, must be won 
now; and all fruit of victory gathered here, or 
never;— will you still, throughout the puny totality 
of your life, weary yourselves in the fire for vanity? 
If there is no rest which remaineth for you, is there 
none you might presently take ? was this grass of 
the earth made green for your shroud only, not 
for your bed ? and can you never lie down upon it, 
but only under it? The heathen, to whose creed 
you have returned, thought not so. They knew 
that life brought its contest, but they expected from 
it also the crown of all contest : No proud one ! no 
jewelled circlet flaming through Heaven above the 
height of the unmerited throne; only some few 
leaves of wild olive, cool to the tired brow, through 
a few years of peace. It should have been of gold, 
they thought; but Jupiter was poor; this Avas the 
best the god could give them. Seeking a greater 
than this, they had known it a mockery. Not in 
war, not in Avealth, not in tyranny, was there any 
happiness to be found for them — only in kindly 
peace, fi-uitful and free. The wreath was to be of 
loild olive, mark you :— the tree that grows care- 
lessly, tufting the rocks with no vivid bloom, no 
verdure of branch; only with soft snow of blossom, 
and scarcely fulfilled fruit, mixed with grey leaf and 
thorn-set stem; no fastening of diadem for you but 
with such sharp embroidery ! But this, such as it 
is, you may win while yet you live; type of grey 
honor and sweet rest. — Crotonof Wild Olive, Preface, 
p. 15. 

The Eidolon or Phantasm op Wealth. — A 
man's power over his property is at the widest 
range of it, fivefold; it is power of Use, for himself, 



SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY— ECONOMIC CANONS. 201 

Administration, to others, Ostentation, Destruc- 
tion, or Bequest : and possession is in use only, 
which for each man is sternly limited; so that such 
thingvS, and so much of them as he can use, are, in- 
deed, well for him, or Wealth; and more of them, or 
any other things, are ill for him, or lUth. Plunged 
to the lips in Orinoco, he shall drink to his thirst- 
measure; more, at his peril : with a thousand oxen 
on his lands, he shall eat to his hunger-measure; 
more, at his jjeril. He cannot live in two houses at 
once; a few bales of silk or wool will suffice for the 
fabric of all the clothes he can ever wear, and a few 
books will probably hold all the furniture good for 
his brain. Beyond these, in the best of us but nar- 
row, capacities, we have but the power of adminis- 
tering, or m«/-administering, wealth : (that is to say, 
distributing, lending, or increasing it); — of exhibit- 
ing it (as in magnificence of retinue or furniture), — 
of destroying, or, finally, of bequeathing it. And 
Avith multitudes of rich men, administration degen- 
erates into curatorship; they merely hold their 
property in charge, as Trustees, for the benefit of 
some person or persons to whom it is to be delivered 
upon their death; and the position, explained in 
clear terms, would hardly seem a covetable one. 
What would be the probable feelings of a youth, 
on his entrance into life, to whom the career hoped 
for him Avas proposed in terms such as these : "You 
must work unremittingly, and with your utmost 
intelligence, during all your available years, you 
will thus accumulate wealth to a large amount; 
but you must touch none of it, beyond what is 
needful for your support. Whatever sums you 
gain, beyond those required for your decent and 
moderate maintenance, and whatever beautiful 
things you may obtain possession of, shall be prop- 
erly taken care of by servants, for whose mainte- 
nance you Avill be charged, and whom you will 
have the trouble of superintending, and on your 
death-bed you shall have the f)Ower of determining 
to whom the accumulated pro^oerty shall belong, 
or to what purposes be applied." 



202 A BUSKIN' ANTHOLOGY. 

The labor of life, under such conditions, would 
probably be neither zealous nor cheerful; yet the 
only difference between this position and that of the 
ordinary capitalist is the power which the latter 
suj^poses himself to possess, and which is attributed 
to him by others, of spending his money at any 
moment. This pleasure, taken in the imagination 
of power to x>aTt ivith that loith which toe have no in- 
tention of parting, is one of the most curious, though 
commonest forms of the Eidolon, or Phantasm of 
Wealth. But the political economist has nothing 
to do with this idealism, and looks only to the prac- 
tical issue of it — namely, that the holder of wealth, 
in such temper, may be regarded simply as a 
xnechanical means of collection; or as a money- 
chest with a slit in it, not only receptant but suc- 
tional, set in the j^ublic thoroughfare ; — chest of 
which only Death has the key, and evil Chance the 
liistribution of the contents. — Munera Pulveris, pp. 
36, 37. 

Large Fortunes can not Honestly be made 
BY One Man. — No man can become largely rich by 
his personal toil.* The work of his oAvn hands, 
Avisely directed, will indeed always maintain him- 
self and his family, and make fitting provision for 
his age. Btit it is only by the discovery of some 
method of taxing the labor of others that he can be- 
come opulent. Every increase of his capital enables 
him to extend this taxation more widely ; that is, to 
invest larger funds in the maintenance of laborers, 
— to direct, accordingly, vaster and yet vaster masses 
of labor, and to appropriate its profits. 

Large fortunes cannot honestly be made by the 
work of one man's hands or head. If his work bene- 
fits multitudes, and involves position of high trust, 
it may be (I do not say that it is) expedient to re- 
ward him with great Avealth or estate ; but fortune 
of this kind is freely given in gratitude for benefit, 

* By his art he may ; but only when its produce, or the sight 
or hearing' of it, beeoiiies a sul).ieet of dispute, so as to enable 
tlie artist to tax the labor of umltitudes highly, in exchange for 
his own. 



SOCIAL rillLOSOrilY— ECONOMIC CANONS. 203 

not as repayment for labor. Also, men of peculiar 
genius in any art, if the public can enjoy the pro- 
duct of their genius, may set it at almost any price 
they choose ; but this, I will show you when I come 
to speak of art, is unlawful on their part, and ruin- 
ous to their own powers. . . . 

Such fortunes as are now the prizes of commerce 
can be made only in one of three ways : — 

1. By obtaining command over the labor of mul- 
titudes of other men, and taxing it for our own 
profit. 

3. By treasure-ti'ove,— as of mines, xiseful vege- 
table products, and the like,— in circumstances put- 
ting them under our own exclusive control. 

3. By speculation (commercial gambling). 

The two first of these means of obtaining riches 
are, in some forms and within certain limits, lawful, 
and advantageous to the State. The third is en- 
tirely detrimental to it ; for in all cases of profit 
derived from speculation, at best, what one man 
gains another loses; and the net result to the State 
is zero (pecuniarily), with the loss of the tijne and 
ingenuity spent in the transaction ; besides the dis- 
advantage involved in the discouragement of the 
losing party, and the corrupted moral natures of 
both. This is the result of speculation at its best. 
At its worst, not only B. loses what A. gains (having 
taken his fair risk of such loss for his fair chance of 
gain), but C. and D., who never had any chance at 
all, are drawn in by B.'s fall, and the final result is 
that A. sets up his carriage on the collected sum 
which was once the means of living to a dozen fami- 
lies. — Time and Tide, p. 61. 

Noblesse oblige.— This ought to be the first 
lesson of every rich man's political code. " Sir," 
his tutor should early say to him, "you are so 
placed in societj^^t may be for your misfortune, 
it must be for your trial — that you are likely to be 
maintained all your life by the labor of other men. 
You will have to make shoes for nobody, but some 
one will have to make a great many for you. You 
will have to dig ground for nobody, but some one 



204 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY, 

will have to dig through every summer's hot 
day for you. You will build houses and make 
clothes for no one, but many a rough hand must 
knead clay, and many an elbow be crooked to the 
stitch, to keep that body of yours warm and fine. 
Now remember, whatever you and yoiar work may 
be worth, the less your keep costs, the better. It 
does not cost money only. It costs degradation. 
You do not merely employ these people. You also 
tread upon them. It cannot be helped; — you have 
your place, and they have theirs; but see that you 
ti'ead as lightly as f)ossible, and on as few as i50S- 
sible. What food, and clothes, and lodging you 
honestly need, for your health and ijeace, j^ou may 
righteously take. See that you take the plainest 
you can serve yourself with — that you waste or 
wear nothing vainly; — and that you emply no man 
in furnishing you with any useless luxury." — Time 
and Tide, p. 89. 

Riches a Form op Strength.— I do not coun- 
tenance one whit, the common socialist idea of di- 
vision of property; division of property is its de- 
struction; and with it the destruction of all hope, 
all industry, and all justice : it is simply chaos — a 
chaos towards Avhich the believers in modern j^olit- 
ical economy are fast tending, and from which I 
am striving to save them. The rich man does not 
keep back meat from the poor by retaining his 
riches; but by basely using them. Riches are a 
form of strength; and a strong man does not injure 
others by keeping his strength, but by using it in- 
juriously. The socialist, seeing a strong man op- 
press a weak one, cries out — " Break the strong 
man's arms; " but I say, " Teach him to use them 
to better purpose." The fortitude and intelligence 
which acquire riches are intended, by the Giver of 
both, not to scatter, nor to give away, but to em- 
ploy those riches in the service of mankind; in 
other words, in the redemption of the erring and 
aid of the weak — that is to say, there is first to be 
the Work to gain money; then the Sabbath of use 



SOCIAL PIIILOSOFHY— ECONOMIC CANONS. 205 

for it — the Sabbath, whose hiw is, not to lose life, 
but to save. — Unto This Last, p. 84. 

Yet, in some fai--away and yet undreamt-of hour, 
I can even imagine that England may cast all 
thoughts of possessive wealth back to the barbaric 
nations among whom they first arose; and that, 
while the sands of the Indus and adamant of Gol- 
conda may yet stiffen the housings of the charger, 
and flash from the turban of the slave, she, as a 
Christian mother, may at last attain to the virtues 
and the treasures of a Heathen one, and be able to 
lead forth her Sons, saying, — " These are my Jew- 
els."— I77zto This Last, p. 42. 

Capital. — The best and simplest general type of 
capital is a well-made ploughshare. Now, if that 
ploughshare did nothing but beget other plough- 
shares, in a polypous manner, — however the great 
cluster of polypous plough might glitter in the sun, 
it would have lost its function of capital. It be- 
comes true capital only by another kind of splen- 
dor, — when it is seen, " splendescere sulco," to 
grow bright in the furrow; rather with diminution 
of its substance, than addition, by the noble fric- 
tion. And the true home question, to every cap- 
italist and to every nation, is not, "how many 
jjloughs have you?" — but, "where are your fur- 
rows ? " not — " ho,w quickly will this caj^ital repro- 
duce itself?" — but, "what will it do during re- 
production?" What substance will it furnish, 
good for life ? what work construct, protective of 
life ? if none, its own reproduction is useless — if 
worse than none, — (for capital may destroy life as 
well as supi^ort it), its own reproduction is worse 
than useless. — Unto This Last, p. 78. 

If, having certain funds for supporting labor at 
my disposal, I pay men merely to keeji my ground 
in order, my money is, in that function, spent once 
for all; but if I pay them to dig iron out of my 
ground, and work it, and sell it, I can charge rent 
for the ground, and percentage both on the manu- 
facture and the sale, and make my capital profita- 



206 A RUSEIN ANTHOLOGY, 

ble in these three bye-ways. The greater part ol 
the profitable investment of capital, in the present 
day, is in operations of this kind, in which the pub- 
lic is persuaded to buy something of no use to it, on 
production, or sale, of which, the capitalist may 
charge percentage; the said jiublic remaining all 
the while under the persuasion that the percentages 
thus obtained are real national gains, whereas, they 
are merely filchings out of partially light pockets, 
to swell heavy ones. — Crown of Wild Olwe, Preface, 
p. 8. 

If I were to put a turnpike on the road Avhere it 
passes my own gate, and endeavor to exact a shil- 
ling from every passenger, the jjublic would soon 
do away with my gate, without listening to any plea 
on my part that " it was as advantageous to them, 
in the end, that I should spend their shillings, as 
that they themselves should." But if, instead of 
out-facing them with a turnijike, 1 can only per- 
suade them to come in and buy stones, or old iron, 
or any other useless thing, out of my ground, I may 
rob them to the same extent, and be, moreover, 
thanked as a public benefactor, and promoter of 
commercial prosperity. — Grown of Wild Olive, Pref 
ace, p. 9. 

Origin of Riches aivd Poverty. — Suppose that 
three men formed a little isolated republic, and 
found themselves obliged to separate in order to 
farm different pieces of land at some distance from 
each other along the coast; each estate furnishing 
a distinct kind of produce, and each more or less in 
need of the material raised on the other. Suppose 
that the third man. in order to save the time of all 
three, undertakes simply to superintend the trans- 
ference of commodities from one farm to the other; 
on condition of receiving some sufficiently remun- 
erative share of every parcel of goods conveyed, or 
of some other parcel received in exchange for it. 

If this carrier or messenger always brings to each 
estate, from the other, what is chiefly wanted, at 
the right time, the operations of the two farmers 



SOCIAL r III LO SOPHY— EGONOMIG CANONS. 207 

will ^o ou prosperously, and the largest i^ossible re- 
sult in i)roduce, or wealth, will be attained by the 
little coininunity. But suppose no intercourse be- 
tween the land-owners is possible, except through 
the travelling agent; and that, after a time, this 
agent, watching the course of each man's agricul- 
ture, keeps back the articles with which he has been 
entrusted, until there comes a period of extreme ne- 
cessity for them, on one side or other, and then ex- 
acts in exchange for them all that the distressed 
farmer can spare of other kinds of produce; it is 
easy to see that by ingeniously Avatching his oppor- 
tunities, he might possess himself regularly of the 
greater i:)art of the superfluous j^roduce of the two 
estates, and at last, in some year of severest trial or 
scarcity, purchase both for himself, and maintain 
the former jjroprietors thenceforward as his laborers 
or his servants. 

This would be a case of commercial wealth ac- 
quired on the exactest principles of modern political 
economy. But, ... it is manifest that the wealth 
of the State, or of the three men considered as a 
society, is collectively less than it would have been 
had the merchant been content with juster profit. 
The operations of the two agriculturists have been 
cramped to the utmost; and the continual limita- 
tions of the supply of things they wanted at critical 
times, together with the failure of courage conse- 
quent on the prolongation of a struggle for mere 
existence, without any sense of permanent gain, 
must have seriously diminished the effective results 
of their labor; and the stores finally accumulated 
in the merchant's hands will not in anywise be of 
equivalent value to those which, had his dealings 
been honest, Avould have filled at once the granaries 
of the farmers and his own. — Unto This Last, pp. 
37, 38. 

Again, let us imagine a society of peasants, living 
on a river-shore, exposed to destructive inundation 
at somewhat extended intervals ; and that each 
peasant possesses of this good, but imperilled, 
ground, more than he needs to cultivate for imme- 



208 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

diate subsistence. We will assume fartlier (and 
witli too great probability of justice), that the 
greater part of theui indolently keep in tillage just 
as much land as suj^plies them with daily food ; — 
that they leave their children idle, and take no pre- 
cautions against the rise of the stream. But one of 
them, (we will say but one, for the sake of greater 
clearness) cultivates carefully all the ground of his 
estate; makes his children work hard and healthily; 
uses his spare time and theirs in building a rampart 
against the river; and, at the end of some years, 
has in his storehouses lai'ge reserves of food and 
clothing, in his stables a well-tended breed of cat- 
tle, and around his fields a wedge of wall against 
flood. 

The torrent rises at last — sweeps away the har- 
vests, and half the cottages of the careless peasants, 
and leaves them destitute. They naturally come 
for help to the provident one, whose fields are un- 
wasted, and whose granaries are full. He has the 
right to refuse it to tliem : no one disputes this 
right. But he will probably not refuse it; it is not 
his interest to do so, even were he entirely selfish 
and cruel. The only question with him will be on 
what terms his aid is to be granted. 

Clearly, not on terms of mere charity. To main- 
tain his neighbors in idleness would be not only his 
ruin, but theirs. He will require work from them, 
in exchange for their maintenance; and, whether 
in kindness or cruelty, all the Avork they can give. 
Not now the three or four hours they were wont 
to spend on their own land, but the eight or ten 
hours they ought to have spent. But how will he 
apply this labor? The men are now his slaves; — 
nothing less, and nothing more. On pain of starva- 
tion, lie can force them to work in the manner, and 
to the end, he chooses. And it is by his wisdom 
in this choice that the worthiness of his mastership 
is proved, or its vunvorthiness. Evidently, he must 
first set them to bank out the water in some tem- 
porary way, and to get their ground cleansed and 
resown; else, in any case, their continued mainte- 



SOCIAL PIIILOSOrnr^ECONOMIG CANONS. 209 

nance will be impossible. That done, and while he 
has still to feed them, suppose he makes them raise 
a secure rampart for their own ground against all 
future flood, and rebuild their houses in safer 
places, with the best material they can find; being 
allowed time out of their working hours to fetch 
such material from a distance. And for the food 
and clothing advanced, he takes security in land 
that as much shall be returned at a convenient 
period. 

We may conceive this security to be redeemed, 
and the debt paid at the end of a few years. The 
prudent peasant has sustained no loss; hut is no 
richer than he taas, and has had all his trouble for 
nothing. But he has enriched his neighbors materi- 
ally; bettered their houses, secured their land, and 
rendered them, in worldly matters, equal to him- 
self. In all rational and final sense, he has been 
throughout their true Lord and King. 

We will next trace his probable line of conduct, 
presuming his object to be exclusively the increase 
of his own fortune. After roughly recovering and 
cleansing the ground, he allows the ruined peas- 
antry only to build huts upon it, such as he thinks 
protective enough from the weather to keep them 
in working health. The rest of their time he occu- 
pies, first in pulling down, and rebuilding on a 
magnificient scale, his own house, and in ad-ding 
large dependencies to it. This done, in exchange 
for his continued supply of corn, he buys as much 
of his neighbors' land as he thinks he can super- 
intend the management of; and makes the former 
owners securely embank and protect the ceded por- 
tion. By this arrangement, he leaves to a certain 
number of the peasantry only as much ground as 
will just maintain them in their existing numbers; 
as the population increases, he takes the extra 
hands, who cannot be maintained on the narrowed 
estates, for his own servants; employs some to cul- 
tivate the ground he has bought, giving them of its 
produce merely enough for subsistence; with the 
surplus, which, under his energetic and careful 



210 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

superintendence, will be large, he maintains a train 
of servants for state, and a body of workmen, wliom 
lie educates in ornamental arts. He now can sj^len- 
didly decorate his house, lay out its grounds mag- 
nificently, and richly supply his table, and that 
of his household and retinue. And thus, Avithout 
any abuse of right, we should find established all 
the phenomena of poverty and riches, which (it is 
supposed necessarily) accompany modern civiliza- 
tion. In one part of the district, we should have 
unhealthy land, miserable dwellings, and half- 
starved poor; in another, a well-ordered estate, 
well-fed servants, and refined conditions of highly 
educated and luxurious life.— Munera Pulmris, pp- 
115-17. 

War and National Taxation.— Everybody in 
France who is got any money is eager to lend it to 
M. Thiers at five per cent. No doubt, but who is to 
Ijay the five per cent. ? . . . 

The i:>eople who have got no money to lend pay 
it; the daily worker and producer pays it — unfor- 
tunate " William." . . . And the people who are 
to get their five \)eY cent, out of hinia and roll him 
and suck him, — the sugar-cane of a William that 
he is, — how should they but think the arrangement 
a glorious one for the nation ? 

So there is great acclaina and triumphal proces- 
sion of financiers ! and the arrangement is made; 
namely, that all the poor laboring persons in 
France are to pay the rich idle ones five per cent, 
annually, on the sum of ei.i;hty millions of sterling 
pounds, until further notice. 

But this is not all, observe. Sweet William is not 
altogether so soft in his rind that you can crush 
him without some sufficient machinery : you must 
have your army in good order, " to justify public 
confidence;" and you must get the expense of that, 
besides your five per cent., out of ambrosial AVil- 
iiam. He must pay the cost of his own roller. 

Now, therefore, see briefly what it all comes to. 
First, you spend eighty millions of money in fire- 



SOCIAL rniLOSOniY—ECONOMIG CANONS. 211 

works, doing no end of damage in letting them 
off. 

Then you borrow money to pay the firework- 
maker's bill, from any gain-loving persons who 
have got it. 

And then, dressing your baihff's men in new red 
coats and cocked hats, you send them drumming 
and trumpeting into the fields, to take the peasants 
by the throat, and make them pay the interest on 
what you have borrowed, and the expense of the 
cocked hats besides. 

That is " financiering," my friend-s, as the mob of 
the money-makers understand it. And they under- 
stand it well. For that is what it ahvays comes to 
finally; taking the peasant by the throat. He imist 
pay_'for \re only can. Food can only be got out of 
the ground, and all these devices of soldiership, and 
law, and arithmetic, are but ways of getting at last 
down to him, the furrow-driver, and snatching the 
voots from him as he digs.— i^'ors, I., pp- 10:5-1(>.5. 

Capitalists, when they do not know what to do 
with their money, persuade the peasants, in various 
countries, that the said peasjints want guns to shoot 
each other with. The peasants accordingly borrow 
guns, out of the manufacture of which the cap- 
italists get a percentage, and men of science much 
amusement and credit. Then the peasants shoot a 
certain number of each other, until they get tired; 
and burn each other's homes down in various 
places. Then they put the guns back into towers, 
arsenals, etc., in ornamental patterns; (and the 
victorious party put also some ragged fiags in 
churches). And then the capitalists tax both, an- 
nually, ever afterwards, to pay interest on the loan 
of the guns and gunpowder. And that is what 
capitalists call "knowing Avhat to do with their 
money;" and what commercial men in general call 
" practical " as opposed to " sentimental " Political 
Economy.— ^l/itweJ'^i Pulveris, p. 15. 

A CivTr,T/J':P Nation.— This, in Modern Europe, 

consists essenti.illy <'f (A), a mass of half-taught, <li^- 



212 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

contented, and mostly penniless populace, calling it- 
self the people; of (B) a thing which it calls a govern- 
ment — meaning an api^aratus for collecting and 
spending money; and (C) a small number of capi- 
talists, many of them rogues, and most of them 
stupid persons, who have no idea of any object of 
human existence other than money-making, gamb- 
ling, or champagne-bibbing. A certain quantity of 
literary men, saying anything they can get paid to 
say, — of clergymen, saying anything they have been 
taught to say, — of natural philosophers, saying any- 
thing that comes into their heads, — and of nobility, 
saying nothing at all, combine in disguising the ac- 
tion, and perfecting the disorganization, of the mass; 
but with respect to practical business, the civilized 
nation consists broadly of mob, mon&y-collecting 
machine, and cai^italist. 

Now when this civilized mob wants to sjjend 
money for any profitless or mischievous purposes, 
— fireworks, illuminations, battles, driving about 
from place to place, or what not, — being itself pen- 
niless, it sets its money-collecting machine to bor- 
row the sum needful for these amusements from the 
civilized capitalist. 

The ciA'ilized capitalist lends the money, on con- 
dition that, through the money-collecting machine, 
he may tax the civilized mob thenceforAvard for 
ever. The civilized mob spends the money foi-th- 
with, in gunpowder, infernal machines, masquerade 
dresses, new boulevards, or anything else it has set 
its idiotic mind on for the moment; and appoints 
its money-collecting machine to collect a daily tax 
from its children, and children's children, to be paid 
to the capitalists from whom it had received the ac- 
commodation, thenceforAvard for ever. 

That is the nature of a National 'Debt.— Fors, III., 
p. 237. 

A National Debt, like any other, may be honest- 
ly incurred in case of need, and honestly paid in due 
time. But if a man should be ashamed to borrow, 
much more should a people : and if a father holds 



SOCIAL PniLOSOrilY— ECONOMIC CAXONS. 213 

it his hum)!- to provide for his children, and would 
be ashamed to borrow from them, and leave, with 
his blessing, his note of hand, for his grandchildren 
to pay, much more should a nation be ashamed to 
l)orrow, in any case, or in any manner; and if it 
borrow at all, it is at least in honor bound to bor- 
row from living men, and not indebt itself to itsow^i 
unborn brats. If it can't provide for them, at least 
let it not send their cradles to the pawnbroker, and 
pick the pockets of their first breeches.— i^ors, III., 
p. 47. 

An Income Tax the only just one.— In true 
justice, the only honest and wholly right tax is one 
not merely on income, but property; increasing in 
percentage as the property is greater. And the 
main virtue of such a tax is that it makes publicly 
known what every man has, and how he gets it. 

For every kind of Vagabonds, high and low, agree 
in their dislike to give an account of the way they 
get their living; still less, of how much they have 
got sewn up in their breeches. It does not, how- 
ever, matter much to a country that it should know 
how its poor Vagabonds live; but it is of vital mo- 
ment that it should know how its rich Vagabonds 
live.— Fors, I., p. 98. 

Why the weekly Bills are doubled.— The 
weekly bills are double, because the greater part of 
the labor of the people of England is spent unpro- 
ductively; that is to say, in producing iron plates, 
iron guiis, gunpowder, infernal machines, infernal 
fortresses floating about, infernal fortresses stand- 
ing still, infernal means of mischievous locomotion, 
infernal lawsuits, infernal parliamentary elocution, 
infernal beer, and infernal gazettes, magazines, 
statues, and pictures. Calculate the labor spent in 
producing these infernal articles annually, and put 
against it the labor spent in producing food ! The 
only wonder is, that the weekly bills are not tenfold 
instead of double. For this poor housewife, mind 
you, cannot feed her children with any one, or any 
quantity, of these infernal articles. Children can 



214 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

only be fed with divine articles. Their another can 
indeed get to London cheajj, but she has no business 
there; she can buy all the morning's news for a half- 
penny, but she has no concern with theui; she can 
eee Gustave Dora's pictures (and she had better see 
the devil), for a shilling; she can be carried through 
any quantity of fdthy streets on a tramway for 
threepence; but it is as much as her life's worth to 
walk in them, or as her modesty's worth to look into 
a print shoiD in them. Nay, let her have but to go 
on foot a quarter of a mile in the West End, she 
dares not take her purse in her pocket, nor let her 
little dog follow her. These are her privileges and 
facilities, in the capital of civilization. But none of 
these will bring meat or flour into her own village. 
Far the contrary ! The sheep and corn which the 
fields of her village produce are carried away from 
it to feed the makers of Armstrong guns. And her 
weekly bills are double. — Fors, I., p. 418. 



POVERTY. 

Among the various characteristics of the age in 
which we live, as compared with other ages of this 
not yet veri/ experienced world, one of the most 
notable appears to me to be the just and wholesome 
contempt in which we hold poverty. — Joy For Ecer, 
p. 7. 

The mistake of the best men through generr.,fion 
after generation, has been that great one of think- 
ing to help the poor by almsgiving, and by preach- 
ing of patience or of ho^je, and by every other 
means, emollient or consolatory, except th" one 
thing which God orders for them, justice. — Unto 
This Last, p. 45. 

Ye sheep without shepherd, it is not the pasture 
that has been shut from you, but the presence. 
Meat ! perhaps your right to that may be plead- 
able ; but other rights have to be i^leaded first. 
Claim your crumbs from the table, if you will; but 



SOCIAL PHlLOSOrHY—ECONOMIG CANONS. 215 

claim them as children, not as dogs ; claim your 
right to be fed, but claim more loudly your right to 
be holy, perfect, and pure. 

Strange words to be used of working people : 
" What ! holy ; without any long robes nor anoint- 
ing oils; these rough-jacketed, rough-worded per- 
sons ; set to nameless and dishonored service ? 
Perfect ! — these, with dim eyes and cramped limbs, 
and slowly wakoning minds? Pure! — these, with 
sensual desire and grovelling thought; foul of body, 
and coarse of soul?" It may be so; nevertheless, 
such as they are, they are the holiest, perfectest, 
purest persons the earth can at present show. They 
may be what you have said ; but if so, they yet are 
holier than we, Avho have left them thus. — TJnto 
This Last, y>- 85. 

Six thousand years of weaving, and have we 
learned to Aveave ? Might not every naked Avail 
have been purple Avith tapestry, and eA-ery feeble 
Ijreast fenced Avith sweet colors from the cold? 
AVhat have Ave done ? Our fingers are too feAv, it 
seems, to tAvist together some poor coA^eiing for our 
bodies. We set our streams to Avork for us, and 
choke the air Avith fire, to turn our spinning-Avheels 
—and,— are we yet clothed i Are not the streets of 
the capitals of Europe foul Avith the sale of cast 
clouts and rotten rags ? Is not the beauty of your 
sweet children left in wretchedness of disgrace, 
Avhile, Avith better honor, nature clothes the brood 
of the bird in its nest, and the suckling of the Avolf 
in her den ? And does not every Avinter'ssnoAV robe 
Avhat you have not robed, and shroud Avhat you 
have not shrouded ; and every winter's Avind bear 
up to heaA^en its AA-asted souls, to Avitness against 
you hereafter, by the voice of their Christ,—" I Avas 
naked, and ye clothed me not ? ''—Mystery of Life, 
pp. 124, 125. 

The ant and the mothhaA^e cells for each of their 
young, but our little ones lie in festering heaps, in 
iiomes that consume them like graves; and night 
by night from the corners of our streets, rises up 



216 A BUS KIN ANTHOLOGY. 

the cry of the homeless — " I was a stranger, and y* 
took me not in." — Mystery of Life, p. 126. 

The little Girl with large Shoes. — One day 
in November, 1873, at Oxford, as I was going in at 
the private door of the University galleries, to give 
a lecture on the Fine Arts in Florence, I was hin- 
dered for a moment by a nice little girl, whipping 
a top on the pavement. She was a very nice little 
girl; and rejoiced wholly in her whip, and top; but 
could not iniiict the reviving chastisement with all 
the activity that was in her, because she had on a 
large and dilaijidated pair of woman's shoes, which 
projected the full length of her own little foot be- 
hind it and before; and being securely fastened to 
her ankles in the manner of mocassins, admitted, 
indeed, of dextei-ous glissades, and other modes of 
progress quite sufficient for ordinary purposes; but 
not conveniently of all the evolutions proper to the 
pursuit of a whipping-top. 

There were some worthy people at my lecture, 
and I think tlie lecture was one of my best. It 
gave some really trustworthy information al)out 
art in Florence six hundred years ago. But all the 
time I was speaking, I knew that nothing spoken 
about art, either by myself or other people, could 
be of the least use to anybody there. For their 
primary business, and mine, was with art in Ox- 
ford, now; not Avith art in Florence, then; and art 
in Oxford now was absolutely dependent on our 
power of solving the question^which I knew that 
my audience would not even allow to be proposed 
for solution — " Why have our little girls lai'ge 
shoes ? "—Fors, II., p. 130. 

The Savoyard Cottac4E.— On a green knoll 
above that plain of the Arve, between Cluse and 
Bonneville, there was, in the year 1860, a cottage, 
inhabited l)y a Avell-doing family — man and wife, 
three children, and the grandmother. I call it a 
cottage, but in truth, it was a large chimney on the 
ground, wide at the bottom, so that the family 
might live round the fire; lighted by one smalj 



SOCIAL PIllLO'^ornY—ECOl^OUIO CANONS. 2lT 

broken "wiiulow, and entered by an unclosing; door. 
The family, I say, was " well-doing;" at least it was 
ho[)e{'ul and cheerful; the wife health}', the children, 
for Savoyards, pretty and active, but the husband 
threatened with decline, from exposure under the 
cliffs of the Mont Vergi by day, and to draughts 
between every plank of his chimney in the frosty 
nights. 

" Why could he not jjlaster the chinks ? " asks the 
practical reader. For the same reason that your 
child cannot wash its face and hands till you have 
Avashed them many a day for it, and will not wash 
them when it can, till you force it. 

I passed this cottage often in my walks, had its 
windoAv and door mended; sometimes mended also 
a little the meal of sour bread and broth, and 
generally got kind greeting and smile from the face 
of young or old; which greeting, this year, narrowed 
itself into the half-recognizing stare of the elder 
child, and the old woman's tears; for the father and 
mother were both dead, — one of sickness, the other 
of sorrow. It happened that I passed not alone, 
but with a companion, a practised English joiner, 
who, while these people were dying of cold, had 
been employed from six in the morningto six in the 
evening, for two months, in fitting, without nails, 
the panels of a single door in a large house in Lon- 
don. Three days of his work taken, at the right 
tinse, from fastening the oak panels with useless 
]irecision, and applied to fasten the larch timbers 
v/ith decent strength, would liave saved these Sa- 
voyards' lives. He would have been maintained 
equally; (I suppose him equally paid for his work 
by the owner of the greater house, only the work not 
consumed selfishly on his own walls;) and the two 
peasants, and eventually, probably their children, 
saved. — Muncra Pulveris. pp. 131-123. 

Labor axd Capital.— The landlord, usurer, or 
labor-master, does not, and cannot, himself con- 
sume all the means of life he collects. He gives 
them to other persons, whom he employs in his own 



218 A EUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

behalf— {>Towers of champagne; jockeys; footmen; 
jewellers; builders; painters; musicians, and the 
like. The diversion of the labor of these persons 
from the production of food to the production of 
articles of luxury is very frequently, and, at the 
present day, very grievously, a cause of famine. 
But when the luxuries are produced, it becomes a 
quite separate question who is to have them, aiid 
whether the landlord and capitalist are entirely to 
monopolize the music, the painting, the architec- 
ture, the hand-service, the horse-service, and the 
sparkling champagne of the world. 

And it is gradually, in these days, becoming man- 
ifest to the tenants, borrowers, and laborers, that 
instead of paying these large sums into the hands 
of the landlords, lenders, and employers, that they 
may purchase music, painting, etc.; the tenants, 
borrowers, and workers, had better buy a little 
music and painting for themselves ! That, for in- 
stance, instead of the capitalist-emi)loyer's paying 
three hundred pounds for a full-length portrait of 
himself, in the attitude of investing his capital, the 
united workmen had better themselves pay the 
three hundred pounds into the hands of the ingen- 
ious artist, for a painting, in the antiquated man- 
ner of Lionaj'do or Raphael, of some subject more 
religiously or historically interesting to them; and 
lilaced where they can alwaj'S see it. And again, 
instead of paying three hundred pounds to the 
obliging landlord, that he may buy a box at the 
opera with it, whence to study the refinements of 
music and dancing, the tenants are beginning to 
think that they may as well keep their rents partly 
to themselves, and therewith pay some Wandering 
Willie to fiddle at their own doors; or bid some 
grey-haired minstrel 

" Tune, to please a peasant's ear, 
The harp a king had loved to hear." 

And similarly the dwellers in the hut of the field, 
and garret of the city, are beginning to think that, 
instead of paying half-a-crown for the loan of half 



SOCIAL PIIILOSOPIIY-EGONOMIG CANONS. -210 

a fireplace, they had better keep their half-crown in 
their pockets till they can buy for themselves a 
whole one. 

These are the views which are gaining ground 
among the poor; and it is entirely vain to endeavor 
to repress them by equivocations. They are founded 
on eternal laws; and although their recognition 
will long be refused, and their promulgation, re- 
sisted as it will be, partly by force, partly by false- 
hood, can only take place through incalculable 
confusion and misery, recognized they must be 
eventually; and with these three ultimate results: 
—that the usurer's trade will be abolished utterly; 
—that the employer will be paid justly for his super- 
intendence of labor, but not for his capital; and 
the landlord paid for his superintendence of the 
cultivation of land, when he is able to direct it 
wisely :— that both he, and the employer of mechan- 
ical labor, will be recognized as beloved masters, if 
they deserve love, and as noble guides when they 
are capable of giving discreet guidance; but neither 
will be permitted to establish themselves any mort 
as senseless conduits, through which the strength 
and riches of their native land are to be poui-ed 
into the cup of the fornication of its Babylonian 
city of the VX&in.—Fors, III., pp. 90, 91. 

The Laborer's Pension. —A laborer serves his 
country with a spade, just as a man in the middle 
ranks of life serves it with a sw^ord, pen, or lancet; 
if the service is less, and therefore the wages during 
health less, then the reward, when health is broken, 
may be less, but not, therefore, less honorable; and 
it ought to be quite as natural and straightforward 
a matter for a laborer to take his pension from 
his parish, because he has deserved well of his 
parish, as for a man in higher rank to take his 
pension from his country, because he has deserved 
Avell of his country. If there be any disgrace in 
coming to the parish, because it may imply im- 
providence in early life, much more is there dis. 
grace in coming to the government; since improvi- 



220 A RU8KIN AN T HO LOO Y. 

deuce is far less justifiable in a liiglily educated 
than in an imperfectly educated man; and far less 
justifiable in a high rank, where extravagance 
must have been luxury, than in a low rank, where 
it may only have been comfort. So that the real 
fact of the matter is, that j)eople will take alms 
delightedly, consisting of a carriage and footmen, 
because those do not look like alms to the peoi^le 
in the street; but they will not take alms consisting 
only of bread and water and coals, because every- 
body would understand what those meant. Mind, 
I do not want any one to refuse the carriage who 
ought to have it; but neither do I want them to 
refuse the coals. — A Joy For Ever, pp. 92, 93. 

American Slavery axd Exglish.— There are 
two rocks in mid-sea, on each of which, neglected 
equally by instructive and commercial powers, a 
handful of inhabitants live as they may. Two 
merchants bid for the two properties, but not in 
the same terms. One bids for the people, buys 
them, and sets them to work, under pain of scourge; 
the other bids for the rock, buys it, and throws the 
inhabitants into the sea. The former is the Ameri- 
can, the latter the English method, of slavery; 
much is to be said for, and something against, 
both. . . . Tlie fact is that slavery is not a politi- 
cal iiistitution at all, hut an inherent, natural, and 
eternal inheritance of a large portion of the human 
race — to whom, the more you give of their own free 
will, the more slaves they will make themselves. — 
Miinera Pulveris, pp. 108, 109. 

EXECUTIOJfS OF THE PoOR AT SHEFFIELD.— As I 

am securely informed, from ten to twelve public 
exections of entirely innocent persons take place 
in Sheffield, annually, by crushing the persons 
condemned under large pieces of sandstone thrown 
at them by steam-engines; in order that the moral 
improvement of the public may be secured, by 
furnishing them with carving-knives sixjjence a 
dozen cheaper than, without these executions 
would be possible.— i'^or.s, IV., p. 138. 



SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY— ECONOMIC CANONS. 221 



WORKINGMEN. 

When we get to the bottom of the matter, Ave 
find the inhabitants of this earth broadly divided 
into two great masses; — the peasant paymasters — 
spade in hand, original and imperial producers of 
turnips; and, waiting on them all round, a crowd 
of polite persons, modestly expectant of turnips, 
for some — too often theoretical — service. — Fors, I., 
p. 144. 

Advice to Worki^gmk;;.— You are to do good 
work, whether you live or die. . . . Mind your 
own business with your absohite heart and soul; 
but see that it is a good business first. That it is 
corn and sweet pease you are producing, — not gun- 
powder and arsenic. . . . But what are we to do 
against powder and peti'oleum, then ? What men 
may do; not what poisonous beasts may. If a 
wretch sjjits in your face, will you answer by 
spitting in his ? if he throw vitrioj at you, will you 
go to the apothecary for a bigger bottle? — Fors, I., 
p. 99. 

Labor should be paid at a fixed Rate.— The 
natural and right system respecting all labor is, 
that it should be paid at a fixed rate, but the good 
workman employed, and the bad workman unem- 
I>loyed. The false, unnatural, and destri;ctive 
system is when the bad workman is allowed to offer 
his work at half-price, and either take the place of 
the good, or force him by his competition to work 
for an inadequate sum. — Unto This Last, p. 14. 

Work of Head and Hand compared.— There 
must be work done by the arms, or none of us could 
live. There must be work done by the brains, or 
the life we get would not be worth having. And 
the same men cannot do both. There is rough work 
to be done, and rough men must do it; there is 
gentle work to be done, and gentlemen must do it; 
and it is physically impossible that one class should 
do, or divide, the work of the other. And it is of 



222 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

no use to try to conceal this sorrowful fact Toy Hue 
words, and to talk to the workman about tlie lion- 
orahleness of manual labor, and the dignity of 
humanity. That is a grand old proverb of Saneho 
Panza's, 'Fine words butter no parsnips;' and I 
can tell yovi that, all over England just now, you 
workmen are buying a great deal too much butter 
at that dairy. Rough work, honorable or not, takes 
the life out of us; and the man who has been heav- 
ing clay out of a ditch all day, or driving an ex- 
press train against the north wind all night, or 
holding a collier's helm in a gale on a lee-shore, or 
whirling white hot iron at a furnace mouth, that 
man is not the same at the end of his day, or night, 
as one who has been sitting in a quiet room, with 
everything comfortable about him, reading books, 
or classing butterflies, or painting pictures. If it is 
any comfort to you to be told that the rough work 
is the more honorable of the two, I should be sorry 
to take that much of consolation from you; and in 
some sense I need not. The rough work is at all 
events real, honest, and, generally, though not 
always, useful; while the fine work is, a great deal 
of it, foolish and false as well as fine, and therefore 
dishonorable; but when both kinds are equally 
well and worthily done, the head's is the noble 
Avork, and the hand's the ignoble. — Crown of Wild 
Olive, Lect. I., p. 30. 

The Commune of '71.— Ouvrier and petroleuse; 
they are gone their way — to their death. But for 
these, the Virgin of France shall yet unfold the 
oriflamme above their graves, and lay her blanched 
lilies on their smirched dust. Yes, and for these, 
great Charles shall rouse his Roland, and bid him 
put ghostly trump to lip, and breathe a point of 
war; and the helmed Pucelle shall answer with a 
wood-note of Domremy; — yes, and for these the 
Louis they mocked, like his Master, shall raise his 
holy hands, and prayGrod's peace. — Fors, I., p. 106. 

Masters. — The masters cannot bear to let any 
opportunity of gain escape them, and fi*a,ntically 



SOCIAL FIIILOSOPHY— ECONOMIC CANONS. 223 

rush at every gap and breach in the walls of For- 
tune, raging to be rich, and affronting with im- 
patient covetousness, every risk of ruin; while the 
men prefer three days of violent labor, and three 
days of drunkenness, to six days of moderate work 
and Avise rest. There is no way in which a prin- 
cii)al, who really desires to help his workmen, may 
do it more effectually than by checking these dis- 
orderly habits both in himself and them; keeping 
his own business operations on a scale which will 
enable him to pursue them securely, not yielding to 
temptations of precarious gain. — Unto This Last, 
p. 14. 

The hospitality of the inn need not be less con- 
siderate or true because the inn's master lives in his 
occupation. Even in these days, I have had no 
more true or kind friend than the now dead Mrs. 
Eisenkraemer of the old Union Inn at Chamouni; 
and an innkeeper's daughter in the Oberland taught 
me that it was still possible for a Swiss girl to bo 
refined, imaginative, and pure-hearted, though she 
waited on her father's guests, and though these 
guests were often vulgar and insolent English trav- 
ellers. For she had been bred in the rural districts 
of happy olden days. — Fors, II., p. 241. 

Supply and Demand.— There maybeall manner 
of demands, all manner of supplies. The true po' 
litical economist regulates these; the false politioal 
economist leaves them to be regulated by (not 
Divine) Providence. For, indeed, the largest final 
demand anywhere reported of, is that of hell; and 
the supply of it (by the broad-gaugeline) would be 
very nearly equal to the demand at this day, unle?? 
there were here and there a swineherd or two who 
who could keep his loigs out of sight of the lake. — 
Arrows of the Chace, II., p. 96. 

I had the honor of being on the committee under 
the presidentship of the Lord Mayor of London, for 
the victualling of Paris after her surrender. It be- 
came, at one period of our sittings, a question of 
vital importance at what moment the law of demaad 



224 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

and supply would come into operation, and what 
the operation of it would exactly be : the demand, 
on this occasion, being very urgent indeed; that of 
several millions of people within a few hours of 
utter starvation, for any kind of food whatsoever. 
Nevertheless, it was admitted, in the course of 
debate, to be probable that the divine principle of 
demand and supjjly might find itself at the eleventh 
hour, and some minutes over, in want of carts and 
horses; and we ventured so far to interfere with 
the divine principle as to provide carts and horses, 
with haste which i3roved, happily, in time for the 
need; but not a moment in advance of it. It was 
farther recognized by the committee that the divine 
principle of demand and supply Avould commence 
its operations by charging the poor of Paris twelve- 
pence for a penny's worth of whatever they wanted; 
and would end its operations by offering them 
twelve-pence worth for a jienny of whatever they 
didn't want. Whereupon it was concluded by the 
committee that the tiny knot, on this special occa- 
sion, was scarcely " dignus tr/ndiae," by the divine 
principle of demand and supply : and that we would 
venture, for once, in a profane manner, to provide 
for the poor of Paris what they wanted, when they 
wanted it. Which, to the value of the sums en- 
trusted to us, it will be remembered we succeeded 
in doing. 

But the fact is that the so-called "law," which 
was felt to be false in this case of extreme exigence, 
is alike false in cases of less exigence. It is false 
always, and everywhere. Nay, to such an extent 
is its existence imaginary, that the vulgar econom- 
ists are not even agreed in their account of it ; for 
some of them mean by it, only that prices are regu- 
lated by the relation between demand and supply, 
which is partly true ; and others mean that the 
relation itself is one with the process of which it is 
iinwise to interfere; a statement which is not only, 
as in the above instance, untrue; but accurately the 
reverse of the truth: for all wise economy, political 
or domestic, consists in the resolved maintenance 



SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY— ECONOMIC CANONS. 225 

of a given relation between supply and deniand, 
other than the instinctive, or (directly) natural, 
^ue.—Manera Pulveris, pp. 9, 10. 



ON CO-OPERATION.* 

While, on the one hand, there can be no ques- 
tion but that co-operation is better than unjust 
and tyrannous mastership, there Is very great room 
for doubt whether it be better than a just and be- 
nignant mastership. 

At present you — every one of you — speak, and 
act, as if there were only one alternative; namely, 
between a system in which profits shall be divided 
in due proportion among all; and the present one, 
in which the workman is paid the least wages he 
will take, under the pressui-e of competition in the 
labor-market. But an intermediate method is 
conceivable; a method which appears to be more 
prudent, and in its ultimate results more just, than 
the co-operative one. An arrangement may be 
supijosed, and I have good hope also may one day 
be effected, by which every subordinate shall be 
paid sufficient and regular wages, according to his 
rank; by Avliich due provision shall be made out of 
the profits of the business for sick and superannu- 
ated workers; and by which the master being held 
responsible, as a minor king or governor, for the 
conduct as loell as the comfort of all those under his 
rule, shall, on that condition, be permitted to re- 
tain to his own use the surplus profits of the busi- 
ness, which the fact of his being its master may be 
assumed to prove that he has organized by superior 
intellect and energy.— T/we and Tide, p. 12. 

Brantwood, Conlston, Lancashire, August, 1879. 

Dkar Mr. IIOLYOAKE : I am not able to write you 

a pretty letter to-day, being sadly tired, but am 

very heartily glad to be remembered by you. But 

* Compare Purt U., Chapter IV. 



226 A E US KIN ANTHOLOGY. 

it utterly silences me that you should waste youi 
time and energy in wi'iting " Histories of Co-opera 
tion " anywhere as yet. My dear Sir, you might ai 
well write the history of the yellow spot in an egg- 
in two volumes. Co-operation is as yet — in an> 
true sense — as impossible as the crystallization ol 
Thames mud. . . . The one calamity which I per- 
ceive or dread for an Englishman is his becoming a 
rascal : — and co-operation among rascals — if it were 
possible — would bring a curse. Every year sees 
our workmen more eager to do bad work and rob 
their customers on the sly. All political movement 
among such animals I call essentially fermentation 
and putrefaction — not co-operation. Ever affec- 
tionately yours, J. IlvsKi::fi.— Arrows of the Chace, 
II., pp. 77, 78. 

The cure of a little village near Bellinzona, to 
whom I had expressed wonder that the peasants 
allowed the Ticino to flood their fields, told me that 
they would not join to build an eft'ectual embank- 
ment high up the valley, because everybody said 
"that would help his neighbors as much as him- 
self." So every proprietor built a bit of low em- 
bankment about his own field; and the Ticino, as 
soon as if had a mind, SAvept away and swallowed 
all ui) together. — Unto Tlris Last, p. 76. 



TRADE. 

The Function of the Merchant in a State.— 
I believe one of the worst symptoms of modern 
society to be, its notion of great inferiority, and 
ungentlemanliness, as necessarily belonging to the 
character of a tradesman. I believe tradesmen 
may be, ought to be— often are— more gentlemen 
than idle and useless people : and I believe that 
art may do noble work by recording in the hall 
of each trade, the services which men belonging 
to that trade have done for their country, both 
l^reserving the portraits, and recording the import- 



SOCIAL FHILO SOPHY— ECONOMIC OANOWS. 227 

ant incidents in the lives, of those who made ^reat 
advances in commerce and civilization.— xi Juy For 
Ever, p. 78. 

The wonder has always been great to me, that 
heroism has never been supposed to be in anywise 
consistent with the practice of supplyin<i- people 
with food, or clothes; but rather with that of quar- 
tering- oneself upon them for food, and stripping 
them of their clothes. Spoiling of armor is an 
heroic deed in all ages; but the selling of clothes, 
old, or new, has never taken any color of magna- 
nimity. Yet one does not see why feeding the hun- 
gry and clothing the naked should ever become 
base businesses, even when engaged in on a large 
scale. If one could contrive to attach the notion 
of conquest to them anyhow? so that, supposing 
there were anywhere an obstinate race, Avho re- 
fused to be comforted, one might take some pride 
in giving them compulsory comfort; and as it were 
" occupying a country" with one's gifts, instead of 
one's armies ? If one could only consider it as 
much a victory to get a barren field sown, as to get 
an eared field stripj^ed; and contend who should 
build villages, instead of who should " cai-ry" them. 
Are not all forms of heroism conceivable in doing 
these serviceable deeds ? You doubt who is strong- 
est ? It might be ascertained by push of spade, as 
well as i3ush of sword. Who is wisest? There 
are witty things to be thought of in planning other 
business than campaigns. Who is bravest ? There 
are always the elements to fight with, stronger 
than men; and nearly as merciless. The only ab- 
solutely and unapproachably heroic element in the 
soldier's work seems to be — that he is paid little for 
it — and regularly : while you traffickers, and ex- 
changers, and others occupied in presumably 
benevolent business, like to be paid much for it — 
and by chance. I never can make out how it is 
that a knight-errant does not exj^ect to be paid for 
his trouble, but a pedlar-errant always does; — that 
people are willingto take hard knocks for nothing, 



228 A BUSKIN ANTIIOLOaY. 

but never to sell ribands cheap; — that they are 
ready to go on fervent crusades to recover the tomb 
of a buried God, never on any travels to fulfil the 
orders of a living God; — that they will go anywhere 
barefoot to preach their faith, but must be well 
bribed to practise it, and are perfectly ready to give 
the Gospel gratis, but never the loaves and fishes. 
If you choose to take the matter up on any such 
soldierly principle, to do your commerce, and your 
feeding of nations, for fixed s.ilaries; and to be as 
I)articular about giving people the best food, and 
the best cloth, as soldiers are about givdng them the 
best gunpowder,, 1 could carve something for you on 
your exchange worth looking at. But I can only 
at ijresent suggest decorating its frieze with pendant 
purses; and making its pillars broad at the base 
for the sticking of hiW^.—Croion of Wild Olive, 
Lect. II., pp. 57-59. 

Philosophically, it does not, at first sight, apjiear 
reasonable (many writers have endeavoi'ed to prove 
it unreasonable), that a peacealile and rational 
person, whose trade is buying and selling, should 
be held in less honor than an unpeaceable and 
often irrational, person, whose trade is slaying. 
Nevertheless, the consent of mankind has always, 
in spite of the philosoijhers, given precedence to 
the soldier. 

And this is right. 

For the soldier's trade, verily and essentially, is 
not slaying, but being slain. This, without well 
knowing its OAvn meaning, the world honors it for. 
A bravo's trade is slaying; but the world has never 
respected bravos more than merchants : the reason 
it honors the soldier is, because he holds his life at 
the service of the State. — U)ito This Last, pp. 23, 24. 

The merchant's function (or manufacturer's, for 
in the broad sense in which it is here used the word 
must be understood to include both) is to provide 
for the nation. It is no more his function to get 
profit for himself out of that jjro vision than it is a 
clergyman's function to get his stipend. The sti- 



SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY-ECONOMIC CANONS. 229 

pend is a due and necessary adjunct, but not the 
object, of his life, if he be a true ciergynian, any 
more than his fee (or honorarium) is the object of 
life to a true physician. Neither is his fee the 
object of life to a true merchant. All three, if true 
men, have a Avork to be done irrespective of fee— to 
be done even at any cost, or for quite the contrary 
of fee; the pastor's function being to teach, the 
physician's to heal, and the merchant's, as I have 
said, to provide. That is to say, he has to under- 
stand to their very root the qualities of the thing 
he deals in, and the means of obtaining or produc- 
ing it; and he has to apply all his sagacity and 
energy to the producing or obtaining it in perfect 
state, and distributing it at the cheapest possible 
price where it is most needed. 

And because the production or obtaining of any 
commodity involves necessarily the agency of many 
lives and hands, the merchant becomes in the 
course of his business the master and governor of 
large masses of men in a more direct, though less 
confessed way, than a military officer or pastor; 
so that on hiin falls, in great part, the responsibil- 
ity for the kind of life they lead : and it becomes 
his duty, not only to be always considering how 
to produce wdiat he sells in the purest and cheapest 
forms, but how to make the various employments 
involved in the production, or transference of it, 
most beneficial to the men employed. ... 

Supposing the captain of a frigate saw it right, 
or were by any chance obliged, to place his own 
son in the position of a common sailor; as he would 
then treat his son, he is bound always to treat every 
one of the men under him. So, also, supposing 
the master of a manufactory saw it right, or were 
by any chance obliged, to place his own son in the 
position of an ordinary workman; as he would 
then treat his son, he is bound always to treat 
every one of his men. This is the only effective, 
true, or practical Rule which can be given on this 
point of political economy. 
And as the captain of a ship is bound to be the last 



230 A BUSKIX ANTHOLOGY. 

man to leave his ship in case of wreck, and to share 
his hist crust with the sailoi'S in case of famine, so 
the manufacturer, in any commercial crisis or dis- 
tress, is bound to take the siiffering of it with his 
men, and even to take more of it for himself than 
he allows his men to feel; as a father would in a 
famine, shipwreck, or battle, sacrifice himself for 
his son. 

All which sounds very strange ; the only real 
strangeness in the matter being, nevertheless, that 
it should so sound. For all this is true, and that 
not partially nor theoretically, but everlastingly 
and practically. — Unto This Last, p. 28. 

People will find that commerce is an occupation 
which gentlemen will every day see more need to 
engage in, rather than in the businesses of talking 
to men, or slaying them; that, in true commerce, as 
in true preaching, or true fighting, it is necessary 
to admit the idea of occasional voluntary loss; — 
that sixpences have to be lost, as well as liv^es, under 
a sense of duty; that the market may have its 
martyrdoms as well as the pulj^it; and trade its 
heroisms as well as war. — Unto This Last, p. 35. 

Considering the materials dealt Avith, and the 
crude state of art knowledge at the time, I do not 
knoAv that any more wide or effective influence in 
l)ublic taste was ever exercised than that of the 
Staffordshire manufacture of pottery under William 
Wedgwood, and it only rests with the manufacturer 
in every other business to determine whether he 
will, in like manner, make his wares educational 
instruments, or mere drugs of the market. You all 
should be, in a certain sense, authors : you must, 
indeed, first catch the public eye, as an author 
must the public ear; but once gain your audience, 
or observance, and as it is in the writer's power 
thenceforward to publish Avhat will educate as it 
amuses — so it is in yours to publish what will edu- 
cate as it adorns. — The Two Paths, p. 76. 

The Making and Selling op bad GIoods.— My 
4ieighbor sells me bad meat : I sell him in return 



SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY— ECONOMIC CAlSfONS, 231 

flawed iron. We neither of vis get one Jitoni of pe- 
cuniary advantage on the whole transaction, but 
we both suffer xinexj)ected inconvenience; my men 
get scurvy, and his cattle-truck runs off the rails. — 
Munera Pulveris, p. 87. 

You drive a gambler out of the gambling-room 
who loads dice, but you leave a tradesmen in flour- 
ishing business, who loads scales ! For observe, all 
dishonest dealing is loading scales. What does it 
matter whether I get short weight, adulterate sub- 
stance, or dishonest fabric ? The fault in the fabric 
is incomparably the worst of the two. — Crown of 
Wild Olive, Lect. II., p. 37. 

No form of theft is so criminal as this — none so 
deadly to the State. If you break into a man's 
house and steal a hundred pounds' worth of plate, 
he knows his loss, and there is an end (besides that 
you take your risk of punishment for your gain, 
like a man). And if you do it bravely and openly, 
and habitually live by such inroad, you may retain 
nearly every moral and manly virtue, and become 
a heroic rider and reiver, and hero of song. But if 
you swindle me out of twenty shillings'- worth of 
quality, on each of a hundred bargains, I lose my 
hundred pounds all the same, and I get a hundred 
untrustworthy articles besides, Avhich will fail me 
and injure me in all manner of ways, when I least 
expect it; and you, having done your thieving 
basely, are corrupted by the guilt of it to the very 
heart's core. 

This is the first thing, therefore, which your gen- 
eral laws must be set to punish, fiercely, immiti- 
gably, to the utter prevention and extinction of it, 
or there is no hope for you. No religion that ever 
was preached on this earth of God's rounding, ever 
proclaimed any salvation to sellers of bad goods. . . . 
For light weights and false measures, or for proved 
adulteration or dishonest manufacture of ai-ticle, 
the penalty should be simply confiscation of goods 
and .sending out of the countiy. The kind of person 
who desires prosperity by such practices, could not 



232 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

be made to " emigrate " too speedily. — Time and 
Tide, pp. 57, 58. 

No SUCH Thi^^g as a just Cheap]vess.— There is 
no such thing as a just or real cheapness. . . . 
When you obtain anything yourself for half-price, 
somebody else must always have paid the other 
half.— ^y^ of England, p. 72. 

Whenever we buy, or try to buy, cheajj goods — 
goods offered at a price which we know cannot be 
remunerative for the labor involved in them, we 
are stealing somebody's labor. Don't let us mince 
the matter. I say, in plain Saxon, Stealing — 
taking from him the proper reward of his work, 
and putting it into our own pocket. You know 
well enough that the thing could not have been 
offered you at that price, unless distress of some 
kind had forced the i^roducer to part with it. You 
take advantage of this distress, and you force as 
much out of him as you can under the circum- 
stances. The old barons of the middle ages used, 
in general, the thumb-screw, to extort property; 
we moderns use, in preference, hunger or domestic 
affliction : but the fact of extortion remains pre- 
cisely the same. Whether we force the man's 
property from him by pinching his stomach, or 
pinching his fingers, makes some difference ana- 
tomically; — moi-ally, none whatsoever: we use a 
form of torture of some sort in order to make him 
give up his property; we use, indeed, the man's own 
anxieties, instead of the rack; and his immediate 
peril of starvation, instead of the pistol at the head; 
but otherwise we differ from Front-de-Bceuf, or 
Dick Turpin, merely in being less dexterous, more 
cowardly, and more cruel. — The Two Paths, p. 127. 

Trade as it is, and Trade as it should be.— It 
is very curious to watch the efforts of two shoi> 
keepers to ruin each other, neither having the least 
idea that his ruined neighbor must eventually be 
supported at his own expense, Avith an increase of 
poor rates; and that the contest between them is 
not in reality which shall get everything for him- 



SOCIAL PniLOSOPHY-ECONOMIG CANONS. 2;Ja 

self, but which shall first take upon himself and his 
customers the gratuitous maintenance of the other's 
family. — A Joy For Ever, p. 90. 

Sin sticks so fast between the joinings of the 
stones of buying and selling, that " to trade " in 
things, or literally ''cross-give" them, has warped 
itself, by the instinct of nations, into their worst 
word for fraud; and "trader," " traditor," and 
"traitor" are but the same word. For which 
simplicity of language there is more reason than 
at first appears : for as in true commerce there is 
no "profit," so in true commerce there is no "sale." 
The idea of sale is that of an interchange between 
enemies respectively endeavoring to get the better 
one of another; but commerce is an exchange be- 
tM-een friends; and there is no desire but that it 
should be just, any more than there would be 
between membei-s of the same family. — Munera 
Pulveris, pp. 81, 82. 

Middlemen in Trade.— Here's my publisher, 
gets tenpence a dozen for his cabbages; the con- 
sumer pays threepence each. That is to say, you 
pay for three cabbages and a half, and the middle- 
man keejjs two and a half for himself, and gives 
you one. 

Suppose yovi saw^ this financial gentleman, in 
bodily presence, toll-taking at your door — that 
you bought three loaves, and saw him pocket two, 
and pick the best crust off the third as he handed 
it in; — that you paid for a pot of beer, and saw him 
di'ink two-thirds of it, and hand j^ou over the pot 
and sops — ^would you long ask, then, what w'as to 
become of him? — Fors, III., p. 309. 

Pay as you go. — In all wise commerce, payment, 
large or small, should be over the counter. If you 
can't pay for a thing, don't buy it. If you can't 
get paid for it, dont sell it. So, you will have calm 
days, drowsy nights, all the good business you have 
now, and none of the bad. — Fors, I., p. 362. 

Free Trade. — The distances of nations are njeas- 
ured, not by seas, but by ignorances; and their 



234 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

divisions determined, not by dialects, but by enmi- 
ties. — Munera Piilveris, p. 79. 

It Avill be observed tliat I do not admit even the 
idea of reciprocity. Let other nations, if they like, 
keep their ports shut; every wise nation will throw 
its own open. It is not the opening them, but a 
sudden, inconsidei-ate, and blunderingly experi- 
mental manner of opening them, which does the 
harm. If you have been protecting a manufacture 
for long series of years, you must not take protec- 
tion off in a moment, so as throw every one of its 
operatives at once out of employ, any more than 
you must take all its wrappings off a feeble child at 
once in cold weather, though the cumber of them 
may have been radically injuring its health. Little 
by little, you must I'estore it to freedom and to air. 
. . . When trade is entirely free, no country can 
be competed with in the articles for the production 
of which it is naturally calculated; nor can it com- 
pete with any other in the production of articles 
for which it is not naturally calculated. Tuscany, 
for instance, cannot compete with England in steel, 
nor England with Tuscany in oil. They must ex- 
change their steel and oil. Which exchange should 
be as frank and free as honesty and the sea-winds 
can make it. Competition, indeed, arises at first, 
and sharply, in order to prove which is strongest in 
any given manufacture possible to both; this point 
once ascertained, competition is at an end. — Unto 
This Last, pp. 56, 57. 

Excha:n^ge. — There are in the main two great 
fallacies which the rascals of the world rejoice in 
making its fools proclaim : The first, that by con- 
tinually exchanging, and cheating each other on 
exchange, two exchanging persons, out of one pot, 
alternating with one kettle, can make their two 
fortunes. That is the principle of Trade. The 
second, that Judas's bag has become a juggler's, in 
which, if Mr. P. deposits his pot. and waits awhile, 
there Avill come out two pots, both full of broth; 
and if Mr. K. deposits his kettle, and Avaits awhile, 



SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY— ECONOMIC CANONS. 235 

there will come out two kettles, both full of fish ! 
That is the principle of Interest. — Fors, II., p. 267. 

One man, by sowing and reaping, turns one 
measure of corn into two measures. That is Profit. 
Another by digging and forging, turns one spade 
into two spades. That is Profit. But the man who 
has two measures of coi*n wants sometimes to dig; 
and the man who has two spades wants sometimes 
to eat : — They exchange the gained grain for the 
gained tool; and both are the better for the ex- 
change; but though there is much advantage in 
the transaction, there is no Pro^^. Nothing is con- 
structed or produced. . . . Pro^^, or material gain, 
is attainable only by construction or by discovery; 
not by exchange. AVhenever material gain follows 
exchange, for every plus there is a precisely equal 
minus- 

Unhappily for the progress of the science of Politi- 
cal Economy, the ^?«6' quantities, or — if I may be al- 
lowed to coin an awkward plural — the 2)hises, make 
a very positive and venerable appearance in the 
world, so that every one is eager to learn the science 
which produces results so magnificent, whereas the 
minuses have, on the other hand, a tendency to re- 
tire into back streets, and other places of shade, — 
or even to get themselves wholly and finally put 
out of sight in graves : which renders the algebra 
of this science peculiar, and difficultly legible : a 
large number of its negative signs being written by 
the account-keeper in a kind of red ink, which 
starvation thins, and makes strangely pale, or even 
quite invisible ink, for the present.— C/;ito This Last, 
pp. 71, 72. 

Definition op Property. — A man's "Property," 
the possession "proper" to him, his own, rightly 
so called, and no one else's on any pretence of theirs 
— consists of : — (A) The good things, (B) Which he 
has honestly got, (C) And can skilfully use. — That 
is the A B C of Property.— i^ors. III., p. a09. 

The Spending, or Consumption op Wealth. — 
It is because of this (among many other such errors) 



236 A liUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

that I have fearlessly declared, your so-called 
science of Political Economy to be no science; be- 
cause, namely, it has omitted the study of exactly 
the most important branch of the business — the 
study of spending. For spend you must, and as 
much as you make, ultimately. You gather corn : — 
will you bury England under a heap of grain; or 
will you, when you have gathered, finally eat? 
You gather gold : — will you make your house-roofs 
of it, or pave your streets with it ? — Crown of 
Wild Olive, Lect. II., p. 60. 

There is not one person in a million who knows 
what a " million " means; and that is one reason 
the nation is always ready to let its ministers spend 
a million or two in cannon, if they can show they 
have saved twopence-halfpenny in tape. — Bugle's 
Nest, p. 23. 

A certain quantity of the food produced by the 
country is paid annually by it into the squire's 
hand, in the form of rent, privately, and taxes, 
publicly. If he uses this food to support a food- 
producing population, he inci*eases daily the 
strength of the country and his own; but if he uses 
if to support an idle population, or one producing 
merely trinkets in iron, or gold, or other rubbish, 
he steadily weakens the country, and debases him- 
self.— i^ors, II., p. 343. 

Unnecessary Luxury is Waste. — If a school- 
boy goes out in the morning with five shillings in 
his pocket, and comes home at night penniless 
(having spent his all in tarts), principal and interest 
are gone, and fruiterer and baker are enriched. So 
far so good. But suppose the schoolboy, instead, 
has bought a book and a knife; principal and in- 
terest are gone, and bookseller and cutler are en- 
riched. But the schoolboy is enriched also, and 
may help his schoolfellows next day with knife and 
book, instead of lying in bed and incurring a debt 
to the doctor. — A Joy For Ever, p. 103. 

The beggared Millionaire.— The spending of 
the fortune in extravagance, has taken a certain 



SOCIAL FIIILOSOPIIY—ECONOMW CANONS. 237 

number of years (suppose ten), and during that 
time 1,000,000 dollars worth of work has been done 
by the people, who have been paid that sum for it. 
Where is the product of that work ? By your own 
statement, wholly consumed; for the man for whom 
it has been done is now a beggar. You have given 
therefore, as a nation, 1,000,000 dollars worth of 
work, and ten years of time, and you have pro- 
duced, as ultimate result, one beggar ! Excellent 
economy, gentlemen; and sure to conduce, in due 
sequence, to the production of more than one beg- 
gar. —J. Joy For Ever, \y. 102. 

The Expenditures op the Rich.— When Mr. 
Greg so pleasantly showed in the Contemporary 
Remew how benevolent the rich were in drinking 
champagne, [on the (false) theory that expediture 
of money for luxuries is a help to the poor : in 
reality (says Ruskin), the nation is so much the 
poorer for every penny spent in indulgence of use- 
less luxury,] and how wicked the poor were in drink- 
ing beer, you will find that in Fors of vol. iii, p. 85, 
I requested him to supply the point of economical 
information which he had inadvertently overlooked 
— how the champagne-drinker had got his cham- 
pagne. The poor man, drunk in an ungraceful 
manner though he be, has yet w^orked for his beer — ■ 
and does but drink his Avages. I asked, of course, 
for complete parallel of the two cases — what work 
the rich man had done for his sparkling beer; and 
how it came to pass that he had got so much higher 
wages, that he could put them, unblamed, to that 
benevolent use. To which question, you observe, 
Mr. Grag has never ventured the slightest answer. 
^Fors, IV., p. 49. 

WisK Consumption the difficult Thing.— 
Consumption absolute is the end, crown, and per- 
fection of production; and wise consumption is a 
far more difficult art than wise production. Twen- 
ty people can gain money for one who can use it; 
and the vital question, for individual and for 
nation, is, never "how much do they make? " but 



238 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

"to what purpose do they spend ? "—Z7«^o This 

Last, p. 77. 

The final object of political economy is to get 
good njethod of consumption, and great quantity 
of consumption: in other words, to use everything, 

and to use it nobly Tt matters, so far as 

the laborer's immediate profit is concerned, not an 
iron filing whether I employ him in growing a 
peach, or forging a bombshell; but my probable 
mode of consumj)tion of those articles matters seri- 
ously. Admit that it is to be in both cases "un- 
selfish," and the difference, to him, is final, whether 
when his child is ill I Avalk into his cottage and 
give it the peach, or drop the shell down his 
chimney, and blow his roof off. — Unto This Last, 
pp. 80, 82. 



LAND. 



There are two theories on the subject of land now 
abroad, and in contention; both false: 

The first is that by Heavenly law, there have 
always existed, and must continue to exist, a cer- 
tain number of hereditarily sacred persons, to whom 
the earth, air, and water of the world belong, as 
personal property; of which earth, air and water 
these persons may, at their pleasure, permit, or for- 
bid the rest of the human race to eat, breathe, or to 
drink. This theory is not for many years longer 
tenable. The adverse theory is that a division of 
the land of the world among the mob of the world 
would immediately elevate the said mob into sacred 
pei'sonages; that houses would then build them 
selves, and corn grow of itself; and that everybody 
would be able to live without doing any work for 
his living. This theory would also be found highly 
untenable in practice. — Sesame and Lilies, p. 51. 

Possession of land implies the duty of living on 
it, and by it, if thei-e is enough to live on; then, 
having got one's own life from it by one's own 



SOCIAL r II LLo Si )i>iIY^ECONOMIG CANONS. 239 

labor or Nvise superiutentlence of labor, if there i« 
more land than is enough for one's self, the duty 
of making it fruitful and beautiful for as many 
more as can live on it.— Fors, IV., p. 378. 

Rext.— Rent is an exaction, by force of hand, for 
the maintenance of squires. — Fors, II., p. 220. 

The rents of our lands [in Utopia], though they 
Will be required from the tenantry as strictly as 
those of any other estates, will differ from common 
rents primarily in being lowered, instead of raised, 
in proportion to every inqjrovement made by the 
tenant; secondly, in that they will be entirely used 
for the benefit of the tenantry themselves, or better 
culture of the estates, no money being ever taken 
by the landlords unless they earn it by their own 
personallabor. — Fors, III., p. 41. 

You lease your tenants an orchard of crab-trees 
for so much a year; they leave you, at the end of 
the lease, an orchard of golden pippins. Supposing 
they have paid you their rent regularly, you have 
no right to anything more than w'hat you lent 
them — crab-trees, to wit. You. must pay them for 
the better trees which by their good industry they 
give you back, or, which is the sanje thing, previ- 
ously reduce their rent in proportion to the im- 
provement in apples. "The exact contrary," you 
observe, "of your present modes of proceeding." 
Just so, gentlemen; and it is not imj^robable that 
the exact contrary in many other cases of your 
present modes of proceeding will be found by you, 
eventually, the proper one, and more than that, the 
necessary one. — Fo7's, II., p. 2G2. 

The most wretched houses of the poor in London 
often pay ten or fifteen per cent, to the landlord; 
and I have known an instance of sanitary legisla- 
tion being hindered, to the loss of many hundreds 
of lives, in order that the rents of a nobleman, 
derived from the necessities of the poor, might not 
be diminished. . . . I felt this evil so strongly that 
I bought, in the Avorst part of London, one freehold 



240 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

and one leasehold i^ropej-ty, consisting of houses 
inhabited by the lowest j^oor; in order to try what 
change in their comfort and habits I could effect 
by taking only a just rent, but that flruily. The 
houses of the leasehold pay me five per cent.; the 
families that used to have one room in them have 
now two; and are more orderly and hopeful besides; 
and there is a surplus still on the rents they pay, 
after I have taken my five per cent., with which, 
if all goes well, they will eventually be able to buy 
twelve years of the lease from me. The freehold 
pays three per cent., Avith similar results in the 
comfort of the tenant. This is merely an example 
of what might be done by firm State action in such 
matters. — Ti/ne and Tide, p. 99. 

Railroads.— Going by railroad I do not consider 
as travelling at all; it is merely " being sent" to a 
place, and very little different from becoming a 
parcel; the next step to it would of coui'se be tele- 
graphic transport, of which, however, I suppose it 
has been truly said by Octave Feuillet, 

" il {/ aurait des gens assez betes pour trouver 9a amusant." 
A man who really loves travelling would as soon 
consent to i^ack a day of happiness into an hour of 
railroad, as one who loved eating Avould agree, if 
it were possible, to concentrate his dinner into a 
lii\\.~ Modern Painters, III., pp. 319, 320. 

A Railway Traveller. — A person carried in an 
iron box by a kettle on wheels.— i^'or^, II., p. 103. 

RusKi.v's PERSONAL UsE OF RAILROADS.— My Cor- 
respondent doubts the sincerity of my abuse of 
railroads because she suspects I use them. I do so 
constantly, my dear lady; few men more. I use 
everything that comes Avithin reach of me. If the 
devil were standing at my side at this moment, I 
should endeavor to make some use of him as a 
local black. The wisdom of life is in preventing 
all the evil we can; and using what is inevitable, 
to the best jjurpose. I use my sicknesses, for the 
work I despise in health; my enemies, for study of 
the philosophy of benediction and malediction; 



SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY— ECONOMIC CANONS. 241 

and railroads, for whatever I find of help in them 
— looking always hopefully forward to the day 
when their embankments will be ploughed down 
again, like the camps of Rome, into our English 
fields. But I am perfectly ready even to construct 
a railroad, when I think one necessary; and in the 
opening chapter of Manera Pulveris my correspon- 
dent will find many proper uses for steam-machin- 
ery siDecifled. What is required of the members of 
St. George's Company is, not that they should 
never travel by railroads, nor that they should 
abjure machinery; but that they should never 
travel unnecessarily, or in wanton haste; and that 
they should never do Avith a machine what can be 
done with hands and arms, while hands and arms 
are \d\e.—Fors, II., p. 333. * 

From Co:?fiSTON to ULVERSTo:yE.— The town of 
Ulverstone is twelve miles from me, by four miles 
of mountain road beside Coniston lake, three 
through a pastoral valley, five by the seaside. A 
healthier or lovelier walk would be difficult to find. 

In old times, if a Coniston peasant had any busi- 
ness at Ulverstone, he walked to Ulverstone; spent 
nothing but shoe-leather on the road, drank at the 
streams, and if he spent a couple of batz when he 
got to Ulverstone, " it was the end of the world." 
But now, he would never think of doing such a 
thing ! He first walks three miles in a contraiy 
direction, to a railroad station, and then travels by 
railroad twenty-four miles to Ulverstone, paying 
two shillings fare. Dui'ing the twenty-four miles 
transit, he is idle, dusty, stupid; and either more 
hot or cold than is pleasant to him. In either case 
he drinks beer at two or three of the stations, passes 
his time, betvveen them, with anybody he can find, 
in talking without having anything to talk of; and 
such talk always becomes vicious. He arrives at 
Ulverstone, jaded, half drunk, and otherwise de- 
moralized, and three shillings, at least, iworer than 
in the morning. Of that sum, a shilling has gone 
for beer, threepence to a railway shareholder, 



242 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

threepence in coals, and eighteenpence has been 
spent in employing strong men in the vile mechani- 
cal work of making and driving a machine, instead 
of his own legs, to carry the drunken lout. The 
results, absolute loss and demoralization to the 
poor, on all sides, and iniquitous gain to the rich. 
Fancy, if you saw the railway officials actually em- 
ployed in carrying the countryman bodily on their 
backs to Ulverstone, what you would think of the 
business ! And because they waste ever so much 
iron and fuel besides to do it, you think it a profita- 
ble one \—Fors, II.. p. 338. 

Let the Nation ow^^ its Railroads.— Neither 
road, nor railroad, nor canal should ever pay divi- 
dends to anybody. They should pay their working 
expenses and no more. All dividends are simply a 
tax on the traveller and the goods, levied by the 
person to whom the road or canal belongs, for the 
right of passing over his property. And this right 
should at once be purchased by the nation, and the 
original cost of the roadway — be it of gravel, iron, 
or adamant— at once defrayed by the nation, and 
then the whole work of the carriage of persons or 
goods done for ascertained prices, by salaried offi- 
cers, as the carriage of letters is done now. 

I believe, if the votes of the proprietors of all 
the railroads in the kingdom were taken eti masse, 
it would be found that the majority would gladly 
receive back their original capital, and cede their 
right of " revising " prices of railway tickets. And 
if railway i^roperty is a good and wise investment 
of capital, the public need not shrink from taking 
the whole off their hands. Let the public take it. 
(I, for one, who never held a rag of railroad scrip 
in my life, nor ever willingly travelled behind an 
engine where a horse could pull me, will most gladly 
subscribe my proper share for such purchase ac- 
cording to my income.) Then let them examine 
what lines pay their working expenses and what 
lines do not, and boldly leave the unpaying embank- 
ments to be white over Avith sheep, like Roman 



SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY -EfJOXOMIG CANONS. 24:^ 

camps, take np the working lines on sound prin- 
ciples, pay their drivers and pointsmen well, keep 
their cari'lages clean and in good repair, and make 
it as wonderful a thing for a train, as for an old 
mail-coach, to be behind its time; and the sagacious 
British public will very soon find its pocket heav- 
ier, its heart lighter, and its " passages " pleasanter 
than any of the three have been for many a daj'. — 
Arrofos of the Chace, II., p. S3. 

A railroad company is merely an association of 
turnpike-keepers, who make the tolls as high as 
they can, not to mend the roads with, bvit the 
pocket. The public will in time discover this, and 
do away with turnpikes on railroads, as on all 
other pu bile- ways —J/«Jif>c/ Pulveris, p- 106. 



MACHINERY. 

A spider may perhaps be rationally proud of his 
own cobweb, even though all the fields in the 
morning are covered Avith the like, for he made it 
himself — but suppose a machine spun it for him Y — 
A Joy For Ecer, p. 139. 

" Hark," says an old Athenian, according to Aris- 
tophanes, " how the nightingale has filled the thii'k- 
ets with honey " (meaning, Avith music as sweet). 
In Yorkshire, your steam-nightingales fill the woods 
with — Buzz; and for four miles round are audible, 
summoning yoiT — to your pleasure, I suppose, my 
free-l)orn?— FO/-.S-, I., p. ;3t)0. 

IModern Utopianism imagines that the world is to 
be stubbed by steam, and human arms and legs to 
be eternally idle; not perceiving that thus it Avould 
reduce man to the level of his cattle indeed, who 
can only graze and gore, but not dig ! It is indeed 
certain that advancing knowledge will guide us to 
less painful methods of human toil; but in the true 
Utopia, man will rather harness himself, Avith his 
oxen, to his plough, than leave the deA'il to driA'e 
it.— Fors, IV., p. :5(S1. 



244 - A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

As all noble sight is with the eyes that Grod has 
given yon, so all noble motion is with the limbs 
God has balanced for you, and all noble strength 
with the arms He has knit. Though you should 
put electric coils into your high heels, and make 
spring-heeled Jacks and Gills of yourselves, you 
will never dance, so, as you could barefoot. Though 
you could have machines that would swing a ship 
of war into the sea, and drive a railway train 
through a rock, all divine strength is still the 
strength of Herakles, a man's wrestle, and a man's 
hlow.— Art of England, p. 68. 

If all the steam engines in England, and all the 
coal in it, with all their horse and ass poAver put 
together, could produce — so much as one grain of 
corn l—Fors, II., p. 338. 

The use of such machinery as mowing implements 
involves the destruction of all pleasures in rural 
labor; and I doubt not, in that destruction, the 
essential deterioration of the national mind. — 
Moder7i Painters, V., p. 162. 

The use of machinery in art destroys the national 
intellect; and, finally, i-enders all luxury impossi- 
ble. All machinery needful in ordinary life to 
supplement human or animal labor may be moved 
by wind or water; while steam, or any mode of 
heat power, may only be employed justifiably under 
extreme or special conditions of need; as for speed 
on main lines of communication, and for raising 
water from great depths, or other such work beyond 
human strength. — Fors, III., p. 250. 



WAR. 



Pro.— The vice and injustice of the world are 
constantly springing anew, and are only to be sub- 
dued by battle; the keepers of order and law must 
always be soldiers. — Athena, p. 88. 



SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY— ECONOMIC CANONS. 245 

The {j;aine of war is only that in which tlie full 
personal power of the human creature is l)rong'ht 
out in inauagenjent of its weapons. . . . Tlie great 
justification of this game is that it truly, Avhen well 
played, determines who is the best man; — who is the 
highest bred, the most self-denying, the most fear- 
less, the coolest of nerve, the swiftest of eye and 
hand. You cannot test these qualities wholly, un- 
less there is a clear possibility of the struggle's end- 
ing in death. — Crown of Wild Olive, p. 75. 

The creative or foundational war is that in which 
the natural restlessness and love of contest among 
men are disciplined, by consent, into modes of 
beautiful — though it may be fateil — play : in which 
the natural ambition and love of power of men are 
disciplined into the aggressive conquest of sur- 
rounding evil : and in which the natural instincts 
of self-defence are sanctified by the nobleness of the 
institutions, and purity of the households, which 
they are appointed to defend. — Crown of Wild Olive, 
p. 70. 

Those Vv'ho can never more see sunrise, nor Avatch 
the climbing light gild the Eastern clouds, without 
thinking what graves it has gilded, first, far down 
behind the dark earth-line, — who never more shall 
see the crocus bloom in spring, without thinking 
Avhat dust it is that feeds the wild flowers of Bala- 
clava. Ask t7ieir witness, and see if they will not 
reply that it is well with them, and with theirs; that 
they would have it no otherwise; would not, if they 
might, receive back their gifts of love and life, nor 
take again the purple of their blood out of the 
cross on the breastplate of England. Ask them : 
and though they should answer only with a sob, 
listen if it does not gather upon their lips into the 
sound of the old Seyton war-cry — " Set on." — Mod- 
ern Painters, III., p. 355. 

All healthy men like fighting, and like the sense 
of danger; all brave women like to hear of their 
fighting, and of their facing danger. This is a fixed 
instinct in the fine race of them; and I cannot help 



246 'A liUSKIN' ANTHOLOGY. 

fiineying that faiv fight is the best play for them ; 
and that a tournament was a better game than a 
steeple-chase. The time may perhaps come in 
France as well as here, for universal hurdle-races 
and cricketing: V)ut I do not think universal 
" crickets" will bring out the best qualities of the 
nobles of either country. I use, in such question, 
the test which I have adopted, of the connection of 
war with other arts; and I reflect how, as a sculp- 
tor, I should feel, if I were asked to design a monu- 
ment for a dead knight, in AVestminster abbey, 
M'itli a carving of a bat at one end, and a ball at 
the other. It may be the remains in me onlj^ of 
savage Gothic prejudice; but I had rather carve it 
with a shield at one end, and a sword at the other. 
— Crown of Wild Olive, p. 74. 

War is the foundation of all the arts, and it is 
the foundation of all the high virtues and faculties 
of men. 

It was very strange to me to discover this; and 
very dreadful — but I saw it to be quite an undenia- 
ble fact. The common notion that peace and the 
virtues of civil life flourished together, I found, to 
be wholly untenable. Peace and the vices of civil 
life only flourish together. We talk of peace and 
learning, and of peace and plenty, and of peace and 
civilization; but I found that those were not the 
words which the Mvise of History coupled together : 
that on her lips, the words were — peace and sensu- 
ality, peace and selfishness, peace and corruption, 
peace and death. — Crown of Wild Olive, p. 70. 

All the pure and noble arts of peace are founded 
on war; no great art ever yet rose on earth, but 
among a nation of soldiers. There is no art among 
a shepherd people, if it remains at peace. There is 
no art among an agricultural peojile, if it remains 
at peace. Conimerce is barely consistent with fine 
art; but cannot produce it. Manufacture not only 
is unable to produce it, but invariably destroys 
whatever seeds of it exist. There is no great art 
possible to a nation but that which is based on 
heittle.—Croivn of Wild Olive, Lect. III., p. 66. 



SOCIAL FHILOSOPHY^ECONOMIC CANONS. 247 

Coiitra. — I, for one, would fain join in the cadence 
of hammer-strokes that should beat swords into 
l)lough-shares. — Groxon of Wild Olive, Lect. III., 
p. !)3. 

The real, final, reason for all the poverty, misery, 
and rage of battle, throughout Europe, is simply 
that you women, however good, hov/ever religious, 
however self-sacrificing for those whom you love, 
are too selfish and too thoughtless to take pains 
for any creature out of your own immediate circles. 
You fancy that you are sorry for the pain of others. 
Now I just tell you this, that if the usual course of 
war, instead of unroofing peasants' houses, and 
ravaging peasants' fields, merely broke the china 
upon your own drawing-room tables, no war in 
civilized countries Avould last a week. . • . Let 
every lady in the upper classes of civilized Europe 
simply vow tliat, while any cruel war proceeds, she 
will wear black; — a mute's black — with no jewel, 
no ornament, no excuse for, or evasion into, pretti- 
ness.— I tell you again, no war would last a week. 
—Crown of Wild Olive, Lect. IIL, p. 93. 

The first reason for all wars, and for the necessity 
of national defences, is that the majority of persons, 
high and low, in all European nations, are Thieves, 
and in their hearts, greedy of their neighbors' 
goods, land, and fame. 

But besides being Thieves, they are also fools, 
and have never yet been able to understand that if 
Cornish men want pippins cheap, they must not 
ravage Devonshire. — Fo):s, I., p. 96. 

''To dress it and to keep it." — That, then, was 
to be our v/ork. Alas ! what work liave we set 
ourselves upon instead ! How have we ravaged 
the garden instead of kept it— feeding our war- 
horses with its flowers, and splintering its trees 
into spear-shafts \— Modern Painters, V., p. 15. 

There is a beautiful type of this neglect of the 
perfectness of the Earth's beauty, by reason of the 
])assions of men, in that picture of Paul Uccello's 
of the battle of Sant' Egidio, in which the armies 



m8 a ruskin anthology, 

meet on a country road beside a hedge of wild 
roses; the tender red flowers tossing above the hel- 
mets, and glowing between the lowered lances. 
For in like manner the whole of Nature only shone 
hitherto for man between the tossing of helmet- 
crests; and sometimes I cannot but think of the 
trees of the earth as capable of a kind of sorrow, 
in that imperfect life of theirs, as they opened their 
innocent leaves in the warm spring-time, in vain 
for men; and all along the dells of England her 
beeches cast their dappled shade only where the 
outlaw drew his bow, and the king rode his careless 
chase; and by the sweet French rivers their long 
ranks of poplar waved in the twilight, only to show 
the flames of burning cities, on the horizon, through 
the tracery of their stems : amidst the fair deflles 
of the Apennines, the twisted olive-trunks hid the 
ambushes of treachery; and on their valley mead- 
ows, day by day, the lilies which were white at the 
dawn were washed with crimson at sunset. — Modern 
Painters, V., p. 19. 

No youth who was earnestly busy with any 
peaceful subject of study, or set on any serviceable 
course of action, ever voluntarily became a soldier. 
Occupy him early, and wisely, in agriculture or 
business, in science or in literature, and h^ will 
never think of war otherwise than as a calamity. 
But leave him idle; and the more brave and active 
and capable he is by nature, the more he will thirst 
for some appointed field for action; and find, in the 
passion and peril of battle, the only satisfying ful- 
filment of his unoccupied being. — Qroron. of Wild 
Olive, p. 71. 



MODERN WARFARE. 

If we could trace the innermost of all causes of 
modern war, I believe it would be found, not in the 
avarice nor ambition of nations, but in the mere 
idleness of the uiTi)er classes. They have nothing 



SOCIAL PnrLOSOPHY^ECONOMlC CAA^OXS. 240 

to do but to toach the peasantry to kill each other. 
—Mimcra Piilccns, p. 121. 

The ingenuity of our inventors is far from being 
exhausted, and in a few years more we may be able 
to destroy a regiment round a corner, and bombard 
a fleet over the horizon.— J.rrow'A' of the Chace, III., 
p. 41. 

It is one very awful form of the operation of 
wealth in Europe that it is entirely capitalists' 
wealth which supports unjust wars. Just wars do 
not need so much money to support them; for most 
of the men who wage such, waL;e them gratis; but 
for an unjust war, men's bodies and souls have both 
to be bought; and the best tools of war for them 
besides; Avhich makes such war costly to the maxi- 
mum. — Unto This Last, p. 82. 

The Americans, in their war of 18G0-G5, sent all 
their best and honestest youths. Harvard University 
men and the like, to that accursed war; got them 
nearly all shot; wrote pretty biograi)liies (to the ages 
of 17, 18, 19) and epitaphs for them; and so, having 
washed all the salt out of the nation in blood, left 
themselves to putrefaction, and the morality of 
New York. — Munera Fulveris, p. 102. 

If you have to take away masses of men from all 
industrial employment— to feed them by the lal)or 
of others— to move them and provide them with de- 
structive machines, varied daily in national rival- 
ship of inventive cost; if you have to ravage tlie 
country which you attack,— to destroy for a seore 
of future years, its roads, its woods, its cities, and 
its harbors;— and if, finally, having brought masses 
of men, counted by hundreds of thousands, face to 
face, you tear those masses to pieces with jagged 
shot, and leave the fragments of living creatures 
countlessly beyond all help of surgery, to starve 
and parch, through days of torture, down into clots 
of clay — what book of accounts shall record the 
cost of your work;— What book of judgment sen- 
tence the guilt of it ? 

That, I say, is modem war— scientific war — ehem- 



250 -A nUSKIN' ANTHOLOGY. 

ical and mechanic war, worse even than the sav- 
age's poisoned nrrow.— Crown of Wild Olive, p. 76. 

If you, the gentlemen of this or any other king- 
dom, choose to make your pastime of contest, do 
so, and welcome; but set not up these unhappy 
peasant-pieces upon the green fielded board. If the 
wager is to be of death, lay it on your own heads, 
not theirs. A goodly struggle in the Olympic dust, 
though it be the dust of the grave, the gods will 
look upon, and be with you in; but they will not 
be with you, if you sit on the sides of the amphi- 
theatre, whose steps are the mountains of earth, 
whose arena its valleys, to urge your peasant mil- 
lions into gladiatorial yva,r.—Croion of Wild Olive, 
p. 72. 

The game of war is entrancingly pleasant to the 
imagination; the facts of it, not always so pleasant. 
We dress for it, however, more finely than for any 
other sport; and go out to it, not merely in scarlet, 
as to hunt, but in scarlet and gold, and all numner 
of fine colors : of course we could fight better in 
grey, and without feathers; but all nations have 
agreed that it is good to be well dressed at this play. 
Then the bats and balls are very costly; our English 
and French bats, with the balls and wickets, even 
those which we don't make any use of, costing, I 
suppose, now about fifteen millions of money annu- 
ally to each nation; all of which, you know, is paid 
for by hard laborer's work in the furrow and fur- 
nace. A costly game ! — not to speak of its conse- 
quences. — Crown of Wild Olives, Lect. I., p. 33. 

Suppose I had been sent for by some private 
gentleman, living in a suburban house, with his 
garden separated by a fruit- wall from his next door 
neighbor's; and he had called me to consult with 
him on the furnishing of his drawing room. I 
begin looking about me, and find the walls rather 
bare; I think such and such a paper might be 
desirable— perhaps a little fresco here and there 
on the ceiling — a damask curtain or so at the 
windows. " Ah," says my employer, " damask cur- 



SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY— ECONOMIC CA^^ON'S. 251 

tains, indeed I That's all very fine, but you know 
I can't alTord that kind of thing just now ! " " Yet 
the Avorld credits you with a splendid income ! '' 
" Ah. yes." says uiy friend, '' but do you know, at 
present, I am obliged to spend it nearly all in steel- 
traps ? " '• Steel-traps ! for whom ? " " Why, for that 
fellow on the other side of the wall, you knoAV : we're 
very good friends, cajjital friends; but we are obliged 
to keep our traps set on both sides of the wall; we 
could not possibly keep on friendly terms without 
them, and our spring guns. The worst of it is, we 
are both clever fellows enough; and there's never a 
day passes that we don't find out a new trap, or a 
new gun-barrel, or something; we spend about 
fifteen millions a year each in our traps, take it all 
together; and I don't see how we're to do it with 
less." A highly comic state of life for two private 
gentlemen ! but for two nations, it seems to me, not 
wholly comic ? Bedlam would be comic, perhaps, 
if there were only one mad man in it; and your 
Christmas pantomime is comic, when there is only 
one clown in it; but when the whole world turns 
clown, and paints itself red with its own heart's 
blood instead of vermilion, it is something else 
than comic, I thinli.— Crown, of Wild Olive, Lect. 
II., p. 48. 

Obsei've what the real fact is, respecting loans to 
foreign military governments, and how strange it 
is. If your little boy came to you to ask for money 
to spend in squibs and crackers, you would think 
twice before you gave it him; and you would have 
some idea that it was wasted, when you saw 
it fly off in fireworks, even though he did no nns- 
chief with it. But the Russian children, and Aus- 
trian children, come to you, borrowing money, not 
to spend in innocent squibs, but in cartridges and 
bayonets to attack you in India with, and to keep 
down all noble life in Italy with; and to murder 
Polish women and children with; and that you. will 
give at once, because they pay you interest for it. 
Now, in order to pay you that interest, they must 



253 A HUSKW ANTHOLOaY. 

tax every working peasant in their dominions; and 
on that work you live. You therefore at once rob 
the Austrian peasant, assassinate or banish the 
Pohsh peasant, and you live on the produce of the 
theft, and the bribe for the assassination ! That is 
the broad fact— that is the practical meaning of 
your foreign loanti, and of most large interest of 
nionev; and then you quarrel with Bishop Colenso, 
forsooth, as if he denied the Bible, and you believed 
it! though, wretches as you are, every deliberate 
act of your lives is a new deiiance of its jjrimary 
orders; and as if, for most of the rich men of Eng- 
land at this moment, it were not indeed to be de- 
sired, as the best thing at least for them, that the 
Bible should not be true, since against them these 
words are written in it: "The rust of your gold 
and silver shall be a witness against you, and shall 
eat your flesh, as it were lire." — Grown of Wild Olive, 
Lect. I., p. 29. 

Thk Attitude op E:ngland toward Italy and 
Poland in 1859 and 1863.— What these matters have 
to do with Art may not at first be clear, but I can 
perhaps make it so by a short similitude. Suppose 
I had been engaged by an English gentleman to 
give lectures on Art to his son. Matters at first go 
smoothly, and I am diligent in my definitions of 
line and color, until, on Sunday morning, at break- 
fast time, a ticket-of-leave man takes a fancy to 
murder a girl in the road leading round the lawn, 
before the house-windows. My patron, hearing the 
screams, puts down his paper, adjusts his spec- 
tacles, slowly apprehends what is going on, and 
rings the bell for his smallest footman. " John, 
take my cai-d and compliments to that gentleman 
outside the hedge, and tell him that his proceedings 
are abnorujal, and. I may add, to me personally 
offensive. Had that road passed through my prop- 
erty, I should have felt it my duty to interfere." 
John takes the card, and returns with it; the ticket- 
of-leave man finishes his work at his leisure; but, the 
screams ceasing as he fills the girl's mouth with clay, 



SOCIAL PHILOSOFIIY— ECONOMIC CANOXt>. 2.-)3 

the English gentleman returns to his muffins, and 
oongrati;lates himself on having " kept out of that 
mess." Presently afterwards he sends for me to 
know if I shall be ready to lecture on Monday. I am 
somewhat nervous, and answer — I fear rudely — 
" Sir, your son is a good lad; I hope he will grow to 
be a man — but, for the present, I cannot teach him 
anything. I should like, indeed, to teach you some- 
thing, but have no words for the lesson." Which 
indeed I have not. If I say any words on such 
matters, people ask me, " Would I have the country 
go to war ? do I know how dreadful a thing war 
is?" Yes, truly, I know it. I like war as ill as 
most people — so ill, that I would not spend twenty 
millions a year in making machines for it, neither 
my holidays and pocket money in playing at it ; 
yet I would have the country go to war, with haste, 
in a good quarrel; and, which is perhaps eccentric 
in me, rather in another's quarrel than in lier own. 
We say of ourselves comi^lacently that we will not 
go to war for an idea; but the phrase interpreted 
means only, that we will go to war for a bale of 
goods, but not for justice nor for mercy. — Arrows 
of the Chace, II., p. 26. 

A Nation's real Strength.— Observe what the 
standing of nations on their defence really means. 
It means that, but for such armed attitude, each of 
them would go and rob the otlier; that is to say, 
that the majority of active j^ersons in every nation 
are at present— thieves. I am very sorry that this 
should still be so; but it will not be so long. Na- 
tional exhibitions, indeed, will not bring peace; 
but national education will, and that is soon com- 
ing. I can judge of tliis by my own mind, for I am 
myself naturally as covetous a person as lives in 
this world, and am as eagei'ly-minded to go and 
steal some things the French have got, as any 
housebreaker could be, having clue to attractive 
spoons. If I could by military incursion carry off 
Paul Veronese's "Marriage in Cana," and the 
" Venus Victrix " and the "Hours of St. Louis," it 



251 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

would give me the profouudest satisfaction to ac- 
oomplisli the foray successfully; nevertheless, being 
a comparatively educated person, I should most 
assuredly not give myself that satisfaction, though 
there were not an ounce of gianpowder, nor a bayo- 
net, in all France. I have not the least mind to 
rob anybody, however much I may covet what they 
have got; and I knoAv that the French and British 
public may and will, with many other publics, be 
at last brought to be of this mind also; and to see 
farther that a nation's real strength and happiness 
do not depend on properties and territories, nor on 
machinery for their defence; but on their getting 
such territory as they have, well filled with none but 
respectable persons. Which is a way of iiijiuitelij 
enlarging one's territory, feasible to every poten- 
tate; and dependent nowise on getting Trent turned,, 
or Rhine-edge reached. 

Not but that, in the present state of things, it 
may often be soldiers' duty to seize territoiy, and 
hold it strongly; but only from banditti, or savage 
and idle persons. Thus, both Calabria and Greece 
ought to have been irresistibly occupied long ago. 
— Time and Tide, p. 108. 

The true Soldier.— The security of treasure to 
all the poor, and not the ravage of it down the val- 
leys of the Shenandoah, is indeed the true warrior's 
work. But, that they may be able to restrain vice 
rightly, soldiers must themselves be first in virtue; 
and that they may be able to compel labor sternly, 
they must themselves be first in toil, and their 
spears, like Jonathan's at Beth-aven, enlighteners 
of the eyes. — Time and Tide, p. 113. 

Advice to Soldiers. — Suppose, instead of this 
volunteer marching and countermarching, you 
were to do a little volunteer ploughing and counter- 
ploughing? It is more difficult to do it straight: 
the dust of the earth, so disturbed, is more grateful 
than for merely i-hythmic footsteps. . . . Or, con- 
ceive a little volunteer exercise with the spade, 



SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY— ECONOMIC CANONS. 255 

other than such as is needed for moat and breast- 
work.— J/^twera Pul verts, p. 120. 

Drkss of Soldier and Peasant. — Quite one of 
the chiefest art-mistakes and stupidities of men has 
been their tendency to dress soldiers in red clothes, 
and monks, or pacific persons, in black, white, or 
grey ones. At least half of that mental bias of 
young people, which sustains the wickedness of 
war among us at this day, is owing to the prettiness 
of uniforms. Make all Hussars black, all Guards 
black, all trooi^s of the line black; dress officers and 
men, alike, as you would public executioners; and 
the number of candidates for commissions will be 
greatly diminished. Habitually, on the contrary, 
you dress these destructive rustics and tJieir officers 
in scarlet and gold, but give your productive rustics 
no costume of honor or beauty. ... A day is 
coming, be assured, when the kings of Europe will 
dress their peaceful troops beautifully; will clothe 
their peasant girls •' in scarlet, with other delights," 
and " put on ornaments of gold upon tJieir appar- 
el;" when the crocus and the lily will not be the 
only living things dressed daintily in our land, and 
the glory of the wisest monarchs be indeed, in that 
their people, like themselves, shall be, at least in 
some dim likeness, "arrayed like one of these." 
— Val D'Arno, pp. 55, 56. 

Two Kinds op Peace. — Both peace and war are 
noble or ignoble according to their kind and occa- 
sion. . . . But peace may be sought in two ways. 
. . . That is, you may either win your jjeace, or 
buy it :— win it, by resistance to evil; — buy it, by 
compromise with evil. You may buy your peace, 
with silenced consciences; — you may buy it, with 
broken vows, — buy it, with lying words, — buy it, 
with base connivances, — buy it, with the blood of 
the slain, and the cry of the captive, ajid the silence 
of lost souls — over hemispheres of the earth, Avhile 
you sit smiling at your serene hearths, lisping com- 
fortable prayers evening and morning, and count- 
ing your pretty Protestant beads (which are flat, 



256 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

and of gold, instead of round, and of ebony, as the 
monks' ones wei-e), and so mutter continually to 
yourselves, " Peace, peace," when there is no peace; 
but only captivity and death, for you, as well as 
for those you leave unsaved; — and yours darker 
than theirs. . . . 

For many a year to come, the sword of every 
righteous nation must be whetted to save or sub- 
due; nor will it be by patience of others' suffering, 
but by the offering of your own, that you ever will 
draAV nearer to the time when the great change 
shall pass vipon the iron of the earth; — when men 
shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their 
spears into pruning hooks; neither shall they learn 
Avar any more. — The Two Paths, pp. 133, 134. 



A DREAM-PARABLE OP AVAR AND WEALTH. 

I drean)ed I was at a child's May-day party, in 
Avhich every means of entertainment had been pro- 
vided for them, by a wise and kind host. It was in a 
stately house, with beautiful gardens attached to it; 
and the children had been set free in the rooms and 
gardens, with no care whatever but how to pass their 
afternoon rejoicingly. They did not, indeed, know 
much about what was to happen next day; and 
some of them, I thought, were a little frightened, 
Itecause there was a chance of their being sent to a 
new school where there were examinations; but 
they kept the thoughts of that out of their heads 
as well as they could, and resolved to enjoy them- 
selves. The house, I said, was in a beautiful gar- 
den, and in the garden were all kinds of flowers; 
sweet grassy banks for rest; and smooth lawns for 
play; and pleasant streams and woods; and rocky 
places for climbing. And the children were happy 
for a little while, but presently they separated 
themselves into parties; and then each party de- 
clared, it would have a piece of the garden for its 
own, and that none of the oth3rs should have any- 



SOCIAL PIIILOSOPirr—ECOA'^OMIG CANON'S. 257 

tiling to do with that piece. Next, they quarrelled 
violently, which pieces they would have; and at 
last the boys took ui^ the thing, as boys should do, 
" practicallj'," and fought in the flower-beds till 
there was hardly a flower left standing; then they 
trampled down each other's bits of the garden out of 
spite; and the girls cried till they could cry no more; 
and so they all lay down at last breathless in the 
ruin, and waited for the time when they were to be 
taken home in the evening.* 

Meanwhile, the children in the house had been 
making themselves liapi)y also in their manner. 
For them, there had been provided every kind of 
in-doors pleasure : there was music for them to 
dance to; and the library was open, with all man- 
ner of amusing books; and there was a museum, 
full of the most curious shells, and animals, and 
birds; and there was a workshop, with lathes and 
carpenter's tools, for the ingenious boys; and there 
were pretty fantastic dresses, for the girls to dress 
in; and there were microscoj^es, and kaleidoscopes; 
find whatever toys a child could fancy; and a table, 
in the dining-room, loaded with everything nice to 
eat. 

But, in the midst of all this, it struck two or 
three of the more "practical" children, that they 
would like some of the brass-headed nails that 
studded the chairs; and so they set to work to pull 
them out. Presently, the others, who were reading, 
or looking at shells, took a fancy to do the like; 
and, in a little while, all the children, nearly, were 
spraining tlieir fingers, in pulling out brass-headed 
nails. With all that they could pull out, they were 
not satisfied; and then, everj'body wanted some of 
somebody else's. And at last the really practical and 
sensible ones declared, that nothing was of any real 
consequence, that afternoon, except to get plenty 
of brass-headed nails; and that the books, and the 

* I have sometimes been asked what this means. I intended 
i»^ to set forth the wisdonx of men in war contending for Icing- 
(Joms, and what follows to set forth their wisdom in peace, 
r intending for wealtli. 



258 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

cakes, and the microscopes were of no use at all in 
themselves, but only, if they could be exchanged 
for nail-heads. And, at last they began to fight 
for nail-heads, as the others fought for the bits of 
garden. Only here and there, a despised one shrank 
away into a corner, and tried to get a little quiet 
with a book, in the midst of the noise; but all the 
practical ones thought of nothing else but counting 
nail-heads all the afternoon — even though they 
knew they would not be allowed to carry so much 
as one brass knob away with them. But no — it 
was — " who has most nails ? I have a hundred, and 
you have fifty; or, I have a thousand and you have 
two. I must have as many as you before I leave 
the house, or I cannot possibly go home in peace." 
At last, they made so much noise that I awoke, and 
thought to myself, " What a false dream that is, of 
children.'" The child is the father of the man; and 
wiser. Children never do such foolish things. Only 
men do. — Mystery of Life, pp. IIG, 117. 



GOVERNMENT. 

Visible governments are the toys of some nations, 
the diseases of others, the harness of some, the 
burdens of more. — Sesame and Lilies, p. 67. 

The Form op a Government immaterial.— No 
form of government, provided it be a government 
at all, is, as such, to be either condemned or 
l^raised, or contested for in anyAvise, but by fools. 
But all forms of government are good just so far as 
they attain this one vital necessity of policy — that 
the wise and kind, few or many, shall govern the 
unwise and unkind; and they are evil so far as they 
miss of this, or reverse it. Nor does the form, in 
any case, signify one whit, but its firmness, and 
adaptation to the need; for if there be many foolish 
persons in a state, and few wise, then it is good 
that the few govern; and if there be many wise, 
and few foolish, then it is good that the many 



SOCIAL rillLOSOPHY— ECONOMIC CANONS. -IM 

govern; and if many be wise, yet one wiser, then 
it is good that one should govern; and so on. — 
Munera Pulmris, p. 103. 

I see that politicians and writers of history con- 
tinually run into hopeless error, because they con- 
fuse the Form of a government with its Nature. 
A government may be nominally vested in an 
individual; and yet if that individual be in such 
fear of those beneath him, that he does nothing lait 
what he supposes will be agreeable to them, the 
Government is Democratic; on the other hand, 
the Government may be vested in a deliberative 
assembly of a thousand men, all having equal au- 
thoritj^ and all chosen from the lowest ranks of 
the people; and yet if that assembly act independ- 
ently of the will of the people, and have no fear 
of them, and. enforce its determinations uijon them, 
the government is Monarchical; that is to sajs the 
Assembly, acting as One, has power over the Many, 
while in the case of the weak king, the Many have 
power over the One. 

A Monarchical Government, acting for its own 
interests, instead of the peoi:)le"s, is a tyranny. I 
said the Executive Government was the hand of 
the nation; — the Republican Government is in 
like manner its tongue. The Monarchical Govern- 
ment is its head. All true and right Government 
is Monarchical, and of the head. What is its best 
form, is a totally different question; but unless it 
act /or the people, and not as representative of the 
people, it is no government at all; and one of the 
grossest blockheadisms of the English in the present 
day, is their idea of sending men to Parliament to 
"represent their opinions." Whereas their only 
true business is to find out the wisest men among 
them, and send them to Parliament to represent 
their oivn opinions, and act upon them. — Constnie- 
tion of Sheepfohls, p. 31. 

The Mosquito Variety op Kixgs.— The self- 
styled " kings" who think nations can be bought 
and sold like personal property can no more be the 



260 A liUSKLV ANTHOLOCiY. 

true kings of the nation than gad-fiies are the king's 
of a horse; they suck it, and may drive it wild, but 
do not guide it. They, and their courts, and their 
armies are, if one could see clearly, only a large 
species of marsh-mosquito, with bayonet proboscis 
and melodious, band-mastered, trumpeting in the 
summer air. — Sesame and Lilies, p. G8. 

Young ME^r in Politics. — Young men have no 
business with politics at all; and when the time is 
come for them to have opinions, they will find all 
Ijolitical parties resolve themselves at last into two 
— that which holds with Solomon, that a rod is 
for the fool's back, and that which holds with the 
fool himself, that a crown is for his head, a vote 
for his mouth, and all the universe for his bellj'. — 
Arroios of the Chace, II., p. 131. 

National Parties. — Men only associate in par- 
ties by sacrificing their opinions, or by having none 
worth sacrificing; and the eflfect of party govern- 
ment is always to develop hostilities and hypo- 
crisies, and to extinguish idenLH.—Fors, I., p. 6. 

Thk Necessity of imperative Law to the 
Prosperity op States. — When the crew of a 
wrecked ship escape in an open boat, and the boat 
is crowded, the provisions scanty, and the prospect 
of making land distant, laws are instantly estab- 
lished and enforced which no one thinks of disobey- 
ing. An entire equality of claim to the provisions 
is acknowledged without dispute; and an equal 
liability to necessary labor. No man who can row 
is allowed to refuse his oar; no man, however much 
money he may have saved in his pocket, is allowed 
so much as half a biscuit beyond liis proper ration. 
Any riotous person who endangered the safety of 
the rest would be bound, and laid in the bottom 
of the boat, without the smallest compunction for 
such violation of the principles of individual lib- 
erty; and on the other hand, any child, or woman, 
or aged person, who was hel[)less, and exposed to 
greater danger and suffering by their weakness, 
would receive more than ordinary care and indul- 



SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY— EGONOMIG CANONS. 261 

gence, not unaccompanied Avith unanimous self- 
sacrifice, on the part of the laboring crew. . . . 

Now, the circumstances of every associated group 
of human society, contending bravely for national 
honors, and felicity of life, differ only from those 
thus supposed, in the greater, instead of less, neces- 
sity for the establishment of restraining law. . . . 
The impossibility of discerning the effects of indi- 
vidual error and crime, or of counteracting them 
by individual effort, in the affairs of a great nation, 
renders it tenfold more necessary than in a small 
society that direction by law should be sternly es- 
tablished. Assume that your boat's crew is disor- 
derly and licentious, and Avill, by agreement, submit 
to no order; — the most troublesome of then) will yet 
be easily discerned; and the chance is that the best 
man among them knocks him down. Common 
instinct of self-pi-eservation will make the rioters 
put a good sailor at the helm, and impulsive pity 
and occasional help will be, by heart and hand, 
here and there given to visible distress. Not so in 
the ship of the realm. The most troublesome per- 
sons in it are usually the least recognized for such, 
and the most active in its management; the best 
men mind their own business patiently, and are 
never thought of; the good helmsman never touches 
the tiller but in the last extremity; and the worst 
forms of misery are hidden, not only from every eye, 
but from every thought. On the deck, the aspect 
is of Cleopatra's galley— under hatches, there is a 
slave-hospital; while, finally (and this is the most 
fatal difference of all), even the feAv persons who 
care to interfere energetically, with purpose of doing 
good, can, in a large society, discern so little of the 
real state of evil to be dealt with, and judge so 
little of the best means of dealing with it, that half 
of their best efforts will be misdirected, and some 
may even do more harm than good. — Time and 
Tide, p. 50. 

[On the American Government and People, see 
hereafter.] 



•262 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

LIBERTY. 

I know not if a day is ever to come when the na- 
ture of right freedom will be understood, and when 
men will see that to obey another man, to labor 
for him, yield reverence to him or to his place, is 
not slavery. It is often the best kind of liberty, — 
liberty from care. The man who says to one, Go, 
and he goeth, and to another, Come, and he com- 
eth, has, in most cases, more sense of restraint and 
difficulty than the man who obeys him. — Stones 
of Venice, II., p. 164. 

You Avill find, on fairly thinking of it, that it is 
his Restraint which is honorable to man, not his 
Liberty; and what is more, it is restraint which is 
honorable even in the lower animals. A butterfly 
is much more free than a bee; but you honor the 
bee more, just because it is subject to certain laws 
which fit it for orderly function in bee society. And 
throughout the world, of the two abstract things, 
liberty and restraint, restraint is always the more 
honorable. ... It is true, indeed, that in these 
and all other matters you never can reason finally 
from the abstraction, for both liberty and restraint 
are good when they ai'e nobly chosen, and both are 
bad when they ai-e basely chosen; but of the tAvo, I 
repeat, it is restraint which charactei-izes the higher 
creature, and betters the lower creature : and, from 
the ministering of the archangel to the labor of the 
insect, — from the poising of the planets to the grav- 
itation of a grain of dust, — the power and glory of 
all creatures, and all matter, consist in their obedi- 
ence, not in their freedom. — The Two Paths, pp. 
131, 133. 

Democracy and Communism.— Now, my dear 
friend, here is the element which is the veriest devil 
of all that have got into modern flesh; this infidelity 
of the nineteenth-century St. Thomas in there being 
anything better than himself, alive; coupled, as it 
always is, with the farther resolution — if unwillingly 
convinced of the fact— to seal the Better living thing 



SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY— ECOXOMIC CAN-ONS. 263 

down aj^ain out of his way, under the first stone 
hundy. — Time and Tide, p. 113. 

The Influence of Machinery upon Politics.— 
It is verily this degradation of the operative into a 
machine. Avhich, more than any other evil of the 
times, is leading the mass of the nations everywhere 
into vain, incoherent, destructive struggling for a 
freedom of which they cannot explain the nature to 
themselves. Their universal outcry against wealth, 
and against nobility, is not forced from them either 
by the pressure of famine, or the sting of mortified 
pride. These do much, and have done much in all 
ages; but the foundations of society were never 
yet shaken as they are at this day. It is not that 
men are ill fed, but that they have no pleasure in 
the work by which they make their bread, and 
therefore look to wealth as the only means of 
pleasure. It is not that men are pained by the 
scorn of the upper classes, but they cannot endure 
their own; for they feel that the kind of labor to 
which they are condemned is verily a degrading 
one, and makes them less than men.— Stones of 
Venice, II., p- 164. 

The "Free Hand" in Drawing.— Try to draw 
a circle yourself with the " free " hand, and with a 
single line. You cannot do it if your hand trem- 
bles, nor if it hesitates, nor if it is unmanageable, 
nor if it is in the common sense of the word " free." 
So far from being free, it must be under a control 
as absolute and accurate as it it were fastened to an 
inflexible bar of steel. And yet it must move, 
under this necessary control, with perfect, untor- 
mented serenity of ease. That is the condition of 
all good work Avhatsoever. All freedom is error— 
Athena, p. Ill- 

Modern Liberty.— You will send your child, 
will you, into a room where the table is loaded with 
sweet wine and fruit— some poisoned, some not?— 
you will say to him, " Choose freely, my little child ! 
It is so good for you to have freedom of choice : it 
forms your character— your individuality ! If you 



264 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

take the wrong cup, or the wrong berry, you will 
die before the day is over, but you will have acquired 
the dignity of a Fi'ee child ! " 

You think that puts the case too sharply ? I tell 
you, lover of liberty, there is no choice offered to 
you, but it is similarly between life and death. 
There is no act, nor option of act, possible, but the 
wrong deed or option has poison in it which will 
stay in your veins thereafter forever. Never more 
to all eternity can you be as you might have been, 
had you not done that — chosen that. . . . 

The liberty of expression, with a great nation, 
would become like that in a well-educated com- 
pany, in which there is indeed freedom of speech, 
but not of clamor; or like that in an orderly senate, 
in which men who deserve to be heax'd, are heard 
in due time, and under determined restrictions. 
The degree of liberty you can rightly grant to a 
number of men is in the inverse ratio of their de- 
sire for it; and a general hush, or call to order, 
would be often very desirable in this England of 
ours. . . . 

The arguments for liberty may in general be 
sumnjed in a few very simi^le forms, as follows : — 

Misguiding is mischievous: therefore guiding is. 

If the blind lead the blind, both fall into the ditch : 
therefore, nobody should lead anybody. 

Lambs and fawns should be left free in the fields; 
much more bears and wolves. 

If a man's gun and shot are his own, he may fire 
in any direction he pleases. 

A fence across a road is inconvenient; much more 
one at the side of it. 

Babes should not be swaddled with their hands 
Jjound down to their sides: therefore they should 
be thrown out to roll in the kennels naked.— ' 
Athena, pp. 114-117. 



FRESH AIR AND LIGHT. 

Fields green and Faces ruddy.— I tell you, 
gentlemen of England, if ever you would have your 



SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY— ECONOMIC CANONS. 205 

country breathe the pure breath of heaven again, 
and receive again a soul into her body, instead of 
rotting into a carcase, blown uj^ in the belly with 
carbonic acid (and great that Avay), you must 
think, and feel, for your England, as well as fight 
for her : you must teach her that all the true great- 
ness she ever had, or ever caia have, she won while her 
fields were green and her faces ruddy; — that great- 
ness is still possible for Englishmen, even though 
the ground be not hollow under their feet, nor the 
sky black over their heads. — Croion of Wild Olive, 
p. 88. 

Fresh Air. — There are now not many European 
gentlemen, even in the highest classes, who have 
a pure and right love of fresh air. They would put 
the filth of tobacco even into the first breeze of a 
May morning. — Time and Tide, jj. 23. 

Rural vs. City Life. — In the country every 
morning of the year brings Avith it a new aspect of 
springing or fading nature; a new duty to be ful- 
filled upon earth, and a new promise or warning 
in heaven. No day is without its innocent hope, 
its special prudence, its kindly gift, and its sublime 
danger; and in every process of wise husbandry, 
and every effort of contending or remedial courage, 
the Avholesome passions, pride and bodily poAver 
of the laborer, are excited and exerted in happiest 
unison. The companionship of domestic, the care 
of serAnceable animals, soften and enlarge his life 
Avith loAvly charities, and discipline him in familiar 
Avisdoms and unboastful fortitudes ; while the di- 
A'ine laws of seed-time Avhich cannot be recalled, 
harA'est which cannot be hastened, and Avinter in 
AA'hich no man can Avork, compel the impatiences 
and coA^eting of his heart into labor too submissive 
to be anxious, and rest too SAveet to be Avanton. 
What thought can enough comprehend the con- 
trast betAveen such life, and that in streets AA'hero 
summer and Avinter are only alternations of heat 
and cold; AA'here snoAv neA^er fell Avhite, nor sun- 
shine clear; Avhere the ground is only a paA^ement, 



266 A RUSKIX ANTHOLOGY. 

and the sky no more than the glass roof of an 
ai'cade; where the utmost i^ower of a storm is to 
choke the gutters, and the finest magic of spring, 
to change mud into dust : wlaere — chief and most 
fatal difference in state, there is no interest of occu- 
pation for any of the inhabitants but the routine 
of counter or desk within doors, and the effort to 
pass each other without collision outside; so that 
from morning to evening the only possible varia- 
tion of the monotony of the hours, and lightening 
of the penalty of existence, must be some kind of 
mischief, limited, unless by more than ordinary 
godsend of fatality, to the fall of a horse, or the 
slitting of a pocket. — Fiction— Fai?' and Foul, pp.7, 8. 
Fair and Fouii. — In my young days, Croxsted 
Lane was a green by-road traversable for some 
distance by carts; but rarely so traversed, and, for 
the most part, little less than a narrow strip of 
unfilled field, separated by blackberry hedges from 
the better cared-for meadows on each side of it : 
growing more weeds, therefore, than they, and 
perhaps in spring a primrose or two — white arch- 
angel-daisies plenty, and purple thistles in au- 
tumn. A slender rivulet, boasting little of its 
brightness, for there are no springs at Dulwich, 
yet fed purely enough by the rain and morning 
dew, here trickled — there loitered — through the 
long grass beneath the hedges, and expanded it- 
self, where it might, . into moderately clear and 
deep pools, in which, under their veils of duck- 
weed, a fresh-water shell or two, sundry curious 
little skipping shi'imps, any quantity of tadpoles 
in their time, and even sometimes a tittlebat, offered 
themselves to my boyhood's pleased, and not inac- 
curate, observation. There, my mother and I used 
to gather the first buds of the hawthorn; and there, 
in after years, I used to walk in the summer shad- 
ows, as in a place wilder and sweeter than our gar- 
den, to think over any passage I wanted to make 
better than usual in Modern Painters. . . . The 
fields on each side of it are now mostly dug up for 
building, or cut through into gaunt corners and 



SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY— ECONOMIC CANONS. 267 

nooks of blind ground by the wild crossings and 
concurrencies of three railroads. Half a dozen 
handfuls of new cottages, with Doric doors, are 
dropped about here and there among the gashed 
ground : the lane itself, now entirely grassless, is a 
deep-rutted, heavy-hillocked cart-road, diverging 
gatelessly into various brick-fields or jjieces of waste; 
and bordered on each side by heaps of — Hades 
only knows what ! — mixed dust of every unclean 
thing that can crumble in drought, and mildew of 
every unclean thing that can rot or rust in damp : 
ashes and rags, beer-bottles and old shoes, battered 
l^ans, smashed crockery, shreds of nameless clothes, 
door-sweepings, floor-sweepings, kitchen garbage, 
back-garden sewage, old iron, rotten timber jagged 
with out-torn nails, cigar-ends, jjipe-bowls, cinders, 
bones, and ordure, indescribable; and, variously 
kneaded into, sticking to, or fluttering foully here 
and there over all these, — remnants broadcast, of 
every manner of newspaper advertisement or big- 
lettered bill, festering and flaunting out their last 
publicity in the pits of stinking dust and mortal 
slime. — Fiction — Fair and Foul, pp. 3, 4. 

Letter to Thos. Dis.ois .—March 21, 1867. I see, 
by your last letter, for which I heartily thank you, 
that you would not sympathize with me in my sor- 
row for the desertion of his own work by Gfeorge 
Cruikshank, that he may fight in the front of the 
temperance ranks. But you do not know what 
work he has left undone, nor how much richer in- 
heritance you might have received from his hand. 
It was no more his business to etch diagrams of 
drunkenness than it is mine at this moment to 
be writing these letters against anarchy. It is the 
first mild day of March (high time, I think, that it 
should be !), and by rights I ought to be out among 
the budding banks and hedges, outlining sprays of 
hawthorn, and clusters of primrose. This is my 
right work; and it is not, in the inner gist and truth 
of it, right nor good for you, or for anybody else, 
that Cruikshank with his great gift, and I with my 
weak, but yet thoroughily clear and definite one, 



268 A Kl/SKIN ANTHOLOGY, 

should both of us be tormented by agony of indig- 
nation and compassion, till we are forced to give 
up our peace, and pleasure, and power; and rush 
down into the streets and lanes of the city, to do 
the little that is in the strength of our single hands 
against their uneleanliness and iniquity. But, as 
in a sorely besieged town, evei'y man must to the 
ramparts, whatsoever business he leaves, so neither 
he nor I have had any choice but to leave our 
household stuff, and go on crusade, such as Ave are 
called to; not that I mean, if Fate may be anywise 
resisted, to give wp the strength of my life, as he has 
given his; fori think he was wrong in doing so; and 
that he should only have carried the fiery cross his 
appointed leagues, and then given it to another 
hand : and, for my own part, I mean these very 
letters to close my political work for many a day; 
and I write them, not in any hope of their beingat 
present listened to, but to disburden my heart of 
the Avitness I haA'e to bear, that I may be free to go 
back to my gai'den laAvns, and paint birds and 
flowers there. — Time mid Tide, pp. 53, 53. 

L'Envoi. — Bred in luxury, Avhich 1 perceiA^e to 
have been unjust to others, and destruc tiA'e to my- 
self; vacillating, foolish, and miserably failing in 
all my oAvn conduct in life — and blown about hope- 
lessly by storms of jiassion — I, a man clothed in 
soft raiment, — I, a reed shaken with the wind, have 
yet this Message to all men again entrusted to me : 
" Behold, the axe is laid to the root of the trees. 
Whatsoever tree therefore bringeth not forth good 
fruit, shall be hewn down and cast into the fire."—. 
Fors, III., p. 45. 

Whether I am spared to put into act anything 
here designed for my country's help, or am shielded 
by death from the sight of her remediless sorroAV, I 
have already done for her as much serAice as she 
has Avill to receiA^e, by laying before her facts A'ital 
to her existence, and unalterable by her poAver, in 
words of which not one has been Avarped by in- 
terest nor Aveakened by fear; and which are as pure 
from selfish passion as if they were spoken already 
out of another world. — Arrows of the Chace, I., p. 7. 



SOCIAL PIIILOSOPUY— EDUCATION. 269 



CHAPTER II. 

Edocation.* 

I take Wordsworth's single line, 

" AVe live by admiration, liope, and love," 

for my literal guide, in all education. — Fors, II., 
p. 340.' 

All education must be moral first; intellectual 
secondarily. — Fors, III., p. 250. 

There is one test by which you can all determine 
the rate of your real progress. 

Examine, after every period of renewed industry, 
how far you have enlarged your faculty of admira- 
tion. 

Consider how much more you can see to rever- 
ence, in the work of masters; and how much more 
to love, in the work of nature. — A Joy For Ever, 
p. 127. 

By this you may recognize true education from 
false. False education is a delightful thing, and 
warms you, and makes you every day think more of 
yourself. And true education is a deadly cold 
thing, with a Grorgon's head on her shield, and 
makes you every day think worse of yourself. 

Worse in two ways, also, more's the pity. It is 
perpetually increasing the personal sense of ignor- 
ance and the personal sense of ivi\x\t.—Time and 
Tide, p. 115. 

Modern "Education" for the most signifies 
giving people the faculty of thinking wrong on 
every conceivable subject of importance to them. — 
Sesame and Lilies, p. 46. 

To make your children capable of honesty is the 
beginning of education. Make them men first, and 

* On tlie education of girls, see Part III., Chapter III., 
" Women." For autobiographical anecdotes of Ruskin on his 
early education, see Part V., Chapter III., "Personal." 



270 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

religious men afterwards, and all will be sound; 
but a knave's religion is always the rottenest thing 
about him.— Ti?ne and Tide, p. 30. 

The first condition under which education can 
be given usefully is, that it should be clearly under- 
stood to be no means of getting on in the world; 
but a means of staying pleasantly in your place 
there. — Time and Tide, p. 67. 

Education, rightly comprehended, consists, half 
of it, in making children familiar with natural 
objects, and the other half in teaching the practice 
of piety toAvards them (piety meaning kindness to 
living things, and orderly use of the lifeless.)— i^ors, 
IV., p. 378. 

You do not educate a man by telling him what 
he knew not, but by making him what he was not; 
and making him what he will remain forever : 
for no wash of weeds will bring back the faded 
purple. And in that dyeing there are two processes 
— first, the cleansing and wringing-out, which is the 
baptism with water; and then the infusing of the 
blue and scarlet colors, gentleness and justice, 
which is the baptism with fire. — Munera Pulveris, 
p. 90. 

The Meat op Knowledge.— Think what a deli- 
cate and delightful meat that used to be in old days, 
when It was not quite so common as it is now, and 
when young people — the best sort of them — really 
hungered and thirsted for it. Then a youth went 
up to Cambridge, or Padua, or Bonn, as to a feast 
of fat things, of wines on the lees, well-refined. But 
now, he goes only to swallow, — and, more 's the 
pity, not even to swallow as a glutton does, with 
enjoyment; not even— forgive me the old Aristotel- 
ian Greek, ^s6;aevo5 t^ <i(/)ri— pleased with the going 
down, but in the saddest and exactest way, as a 
consti'ictor does, tasting nothing all the time. You 
remember what Professor Huxley told you — most 
interesting it was, and new to me — of the way the 
great boa does not in any true sense swallow, but 
only hitches himself on to his meat like a coal-sack; 



SOCIAL riULOSOrilY— EDUCATION. 271 

—Avell, that's the exact way you expect your poor 
modern student to hitch himself on to his meat, 
catching and notching his teeth into it, and drag- 
ging the skin of him tight over it, — till at last — you 
know I told you a little while ago our artists didn't 
know a snake from a sausage, — but. Heaven help 
us, your University doctors are going on at such a 
rate that it will be all we can do, soon, to know a 
m«w from a sausage. — Deucalion, p. 202. 

Education the Eliciting of in-born Quali- 
ties. — In the handful of shingle which you gather 
from the sea-beach, which the indiscriminate sea, 
with equality of eternal foam, has only educated to 
be, every one, round, you will see little difference 
between the nol)le and mean stones. But the 
jeweller's trenchant education of them will tell you 
another story. Even the meanest will be better for 
it, but the noblest so much better that you can 
class the two together no more. The fair veins and 
colors are all clear now, and so stern is Nature's 
intent regarding this, that not only will the polish 
show which is best, but the best will take the most 
polish. You shall not merely see they have more 
virtue than the others, but see that more of vir- 
tue moi-e clearly; and the less virtue there is, the 
more dimly you shall see wdiat there is of it. — Time 
and Tide, p. 114. 

Genius must be cherished and encouraged. — 
We have no ground for concluding that Griotto 
would ever have been more than a shepherd, if 
Cimabue had not by chance found him drawing; 
or that among the shepherds of the Apennines there 
were no other Giottos, undiscovered by Cimabue. 
We are too much in the habit of considering happy 
accidents as what are called " special Providences;" 
and thinking that when any great work needs to be 
done, the man who is to do it will certainly be 
pointed out by Providence, be he shepherd or sea- 
boy; and prepared for his work by all kinds of 
minor providences, in the best possible way. 
Whereas all the analogies of God's operations in 



272 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

other matters prove the contrary of this; we find 
that " of thousand seeds, He often brings but one 
to bear," often not one; and the one seed which 
He appoints to bear is allowed to bear crude or per- 
fect fruit according to the dealings of the husband- 
njan with it. — A Joy For Ever, p. 97. 

"Look Out and not In."— Do you think you 
can know yourself by looking i'}Uo yourself? 
Never. You can know w'hat you are, only by look- 
ing out of yourself. Measure your own powers 
with those of others; compare your own interests 
with those of others; try to understand what you 
appear to them, as well as what they appear to 
you; and judge of yourselves, in all things, rela- 
tively and subordinately; not positively : starting 
always with a wholesome conviction of the jaroba- 
bility that there is nothing particular about you. 
For instance, some of you perhaps think you can 
write i^oetry. Dwell on your own feelings and 
doings : — and you will soon think yourselves Tenth 
Muses; but forget your own feelings; and try, in- 
stead, to understand a line or two of Chaucer or 
Dante : and you will soon begin to feel yourselves 
very foolish girls — which is much like the fact. — 
Ethics of the Bust, Lect. V. 

Action and Character set their Seal on 
THE Face. — Every right action and true thought 
sets the seal of its beauty on person and face; every 
wrong action and foul thought its seal of distortion; 
and the various aspects of humanity might be read 
as plainly as a printed history, were it not that the 
impressions are so complex that it must always in 
some cases (and, in the present state of our knowl- 
edge, in all cases), be impossible to decipher them 
conjpletely. Nevertheless, the face of a consistently 
just, and of a consistently unjust person, may al- 
ways be rightly distinguished at a glance; and if 
the qualities are continued by descent through a 
generation or two, there arises a complete distinc- 
tion of race. Both moral and physical qualities 
are communicated by descent, far more than they 



■ SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY— EDUCATIOJ^. 273 

can be developed by education (though both may 
be destroyed by Avant of education); and there is as 
yet no ascertained limit to the nobleness of person 
and mind which the human creature may attain, 
by persevering observance of the laws of God i-e^ 
specting its birth and training. — Mimera Pulveris, 
p. 21. 

The You^fO Mind is Plastic— The human soul, 
in youth, is not a machine of which you can polish 
the cogs with any keli> or brickdust near at hand; 
and, having got it into working order, and good, 
empty, and oiled serviceableness, start your im- 
mortal locomotive, at twenty-five years old or thh'ty, 
express from the Strait Gate, on the Narrow Road. 
The whole period of youth is one essentially of 
formation, edification, instruction (I use the words 
with their weight in them); in taking of stores, 
establishment in vital habits, hopes and faiths. 
There is not an hour of it but is trembling with 
destinies — not a moment of which, once past, the 
apjjointed work can ever be done again, or the 
neglected blow struck on the cold iron. Take your 
vase of Venice glass out of the furnace, and strew 
chaff over it in its transparent heat, and recover 
that to its clearness and rubied glory when the north 
wind has blown upon it; but do not think to strew 
chaff over the child fresh from God's presence, and 
to bring the heavenly colors back to him — at least 
in this world.— J/ofZer?i Painters, IV., p. 431. 

Certain early Habits ineradicable.— It is 
wholly impossible— this I say from too sorrowful 
experience — to conquer by any effort or time, habits 
of the hand (much more of head and soul), with 
which the vase of fiesh has been formed and filled 
in youth, — the law of God being that parents shall 
compel the child, in the day of its obedience, into 
habits of hand, and eye, and soul, which, when it 
is old, shall not, by any strength, or any weakness, 
be departed from. 

[Illustration of the foregoing]. I can't resist the 
expression of a little piece of personal exultation, 



274 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

hi noticing that a figure in one of Giotto's paintings 
liolds his pencil as I do myself : no writing master, 
and no effort (at one time very steady for many 
months), having ever cured me of that way of hold- 
ing both pen and pencil between my fore and sec- 
ond finger; the third and fourth resting the backs 
of them on my pa,i)eY.—3Ioriiings in Florence, pp. 
80, 118. 

The Elective System op Education.— Whereas 
it was formerly thought that the discipline neces- 
sary to form the character of youth was best given 
in the study of abstract branches of literature and 
philosophy, it is now thought that the same, or a 
better, discipline may be given by informing men 
in early years of things it cannot but be of chief 
practical advantage to them afterwards to know; 
and by permitting to them the choice of any field of 
study which they may feel to be best adapted to 
their personal dispositions. I have always used 
what poor influence I possessed in advancing this 
change; nor can any one rejoice more than I in its 
practical results. — Lectures On Art. 

Your modern ideas of development imply that 
you must all turn out what you are to be, and find 
out what you are to know for yourselves, by the 
inevitable operation of your anterior affinities and 
inner consciences : — whereas the old idea of educa- 
tion was that the ba1)y material of you, however 
accidentally or inevitably born, was at least to be 
by external force and ancestral knowledge, bred; 
and treated by its Fathers and Tutors as a plastic 
vase, to be shaped or mannered as they chose, 
not as it chose, and filled, when its form was well 
finished and baked, with sweetness of sound doc- 
trine, as with Hybla honey, or Arabian spikenard. 
— Pleasures of England, p- 9. 

Virtue must become ixsti^ctive. — The essen- 
tial idea of real virtue is that of a vital human 
strength, which instinctively, constantly, and 
without motive, does what is right. You must 
train men to this by habit, as you would the branch 



SOCIAL rillLO SOPHY— EDUCATION. 275 

of a tree; and give them instincts and manners 
(or morals) of purity, justice, kindness, and courage. 
Once rightly trained, they act as they should, irre- 
spectively of all motive, of fear, or of reward.— -E^i!^- 
ics of the Dust, p. 90. 

National Libraries.— I hope it will not be long 
before royal or national libraries will be founded in 
every considerable city, with a royal series of 
books in them; the same series in every one of 
tliein, chosen books, the best in every kind, pre- 
pared for that national series in the most perfect 
way possible; their text printed all on leaves of 
equal size, broad of margin, and divided into pleas- 
ant volumes, light in hand, beautiful, and strong, 
and thorough as examples of binder's work; and 
that these great libraries Avill be accessible to all 
clean and orderly persons at all times of the day 
and evening; strict law being enforced for this 
cleanliness and quietness. — Sesame and Lilies, p. 71. 

" Le pauvre Exfaxt, II :\'e sait pas vivre.''— 
Getting no education is by no means the worst 
thing that can happen to us. One of the pleasantest 
friends I ever had in my life was a Savoyard guide, 
Avho could only read with difficulty, and write 
scarcely intelligibly and by great effort, lie knew 
no language but his own — no science, except as 
much practical agriculture as served him to till his 
fields. But he was, without exception, one of the 
hapi)iest persons, and, on the Avhole, one of the 
best. I have ever known; and, after lunch, when ho 
had had his half bottle of Savoy wine, he would 
generally, as we walked up some quiet valley in 
the afternoon light, give me a little lecture on phi- 
losophy; and after I had fatigued and provoked him 
with less cheerful views of the world than his own, 
he would fall back to my servant behind me, and 
console himself with a shrug of the shoulders, and a 
whispered " Le pauvre enfant, il nesaiti)as vivre ! " 
— (•' The poor child, he doesn't know how to live.") 
— Fors, L, p. 42. 



276 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

Labor and Scholarship compatible.— Educa- 
tion of any noble kind has of late been so constantly- 
given only to the idle classes, or, at least, to those 
who conceive it a privilege to be idle,* that it is 
difficult for any person, trained in modern habits 
of thought, to iujagine a true and refined scholar- 
ship, of which the essential foundation is to be skill 
in some useful labor. — Fo7-s, I., p. 112. 

A Grammar op Music. — Musicians, like painters, 
ai-e almost virulently determined in their efforts to 
abolish the laws of sincerity and purity; and to in- 
vent, each for his own glory, new modes of dissolute 
<ind lascivious sound. No greater benefit could be 
conferred on the upper as well as the lower classes 
of society than the arrangement of a grammar of 
simj^le and pure music, of which the code should 
be alike taught in every school in the land. My 
attention has been long turned to this object, 
but I have never till lately had leisure to begin 
serious work upon it. During the last year, how- 
ever, I have been making experiments with a view 
to the construction of an instrument by which very 
young children could be securely taught the rela- 
tions of sound in the octave; unsuccessful only in 
that the form of lyre which was produced for me, 
after months of labor, by the British manufacturer, 
was as curious a creation of visible deformity as a 
Greek lyre waa of grace, besides being nearly as ex- 
pensive as a piano ! For the present, therefore, not 
abandoning the hope of at last attaining a simple 
stringed instrument, 1 have fallen back — and I 
think, probably, with final good reason— on the 
most sacred of all musical instruments, the " Bell." 

* Infinite nonsense is talked abont the " work done " by tlie 
upper classes. I have done a little myself, in my day, of the 
kind of work they boast of: but mine, at least, has been all play. 
Even lawyer's, which is, on the whole, the hardest, you may 
observe to be essentially grim play, made more jovial for 
themselves by conditions which make it somewhat dismal to 
other people. Here and there we have a real worker among 
soldiers, or no soldiering would long be possible ; neverthelesa 
young men don't go into the G'lards with any primal or essen- 
tial idea of work. 



SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY— EBUGATION. 277 

Whether the cattle-bell of the hills, or, from the 
cathedral tower, inouitor of men, 1 believe the 
sweetness of its prolonged tone the most delightful 
and wholesome for the ear and mind of all instru- 
mental sound.— i^ori', IV., p. 383. 

Emulation a false Motive.— All that you can 
depend upon in a boy, as significative of true power, 
likely to issue in good fruit, is his will to work for 
the work's sake, not his desire to surpass his school- 
fellows; and the aim of the teaching you give hun 
ought to be to prove to him and strengthen in him 
his own separate gift, not to puff him into swollen 
rivalry with those who are everlastingly greater 
than he : still less ought you to hang favors and 
ribands about the neck of the creature who is the 
greatest, to make the rest envy him. Try to make 
them love him and follow him, not struggle with 
him.— J. Joy For Ever, p. 99. 

Gladness.— All literature, art, and science are 
vain, and worse, if they do not enable you to be 
glad; and glad justly. And I feel it distinctly my 
duty, though with solemn and true deference to the 
masters of education in this university [Oxford], to 
say that 1 believe our modern methods of teaching, 
and especially the institution of severe and frequent 
examination, to be absolutely opposed to this great 
end; and that the result of competitive labor in 
youth is infallibly to make men know all they learn 
wrongly, and hate the haljit of learning.— -E^ft^Ze'ji- 
Nest, p. 108. 

The Competitive System.— The madness of 
the modern cram and examination system arises 
principally out of the struggle to get lucrative 
places; but partly also out of the radical block- 
headism of supposing that all men are naturally 
equal, and can only make their way by elbowing; 
—the facts being that every child is born with an 
accurately defined and absolutely limited capacity; 
that he is naturally (if able at all) able for some 
things and unable for others; that no effort and 
no teaching can add one particle to the granted 



278 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

ounces of his available brains; that by competition 
he may paralyze or i^ervert his faculties, but can- 
not stretch them a line; and that the entire grace, 
happiness, and vii'tue of his life depend on his 
contentment in doing what he can, dutifully, and 
in staying where he is, peaceably. So far as he 
regards the less or more capacity of others, his 
superiorities are to be used for t?iei)' help, not for 
his own pre-eminence; and his inferiorities to be 
no ground of mortification, but of pleasure in the 
admiration of nobler powers. It is impossible to 
express the quantity of delight I used to feel in the 
power of Turner and Tintoret, when my own skill 
was nascent only; and all good artists will admit 
that there is far less personal pleasure in doing 
a thing beautifully than in seeing it beautifully 
done. Therefore, over the door of every school, 
and the gate of every college, I would fain see en- 
graved in their marble the absolute forbidding miS^i' 
Kara ipiBnav f, Ke>'o5o|iai' :— " Let uotMng be done through 
strife or vain glory." 

And I would have fixed for each age of children 
and students a certain standard of pass in examina- 
tion, so adapted to average capacity and power of 
exertion, that none need fail who had attended to 
their lessons and obeyed their masters; while its 
variety of trial should yet admit of the natural dis- 
tinctions attaching to progress in especial subjects 
and skill in peculiar arts. Beyond such indication 
or acknowledgment of merit, there should be nei- 
ther prizes nor honors; these are meant by Heaven 
to be the proper rewards of a man's consistent and 
kindly life, not of a youth's temporary and selfish 
exertion. 

Nor, on the other hand, should the natural tor- 
por of wholesome dulness be disturbed by provo- 
cations, or plagued by punishments. The wise 
proverb ought in every school-master's mind to be 
deeply set — "You cannot make a silk purse of a 
sow's ear;" expanded with the farther scholium 
that the flap of it will not be in the least disguised 
by giving it a diamond earring. If, in a woman, 



SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY— EDUCATION. 279 

Taeauty without discretion be as a jewel of gold in 
a swine's snout, much more, in man, woman, or 
child, knowledge without discretion— the knowl- 
edge which a fool receives only to puff up his 
stomach, and sparkle in his cockscomb. . . . 

It is in the Avholesome indisposition of the aver- 
age mind for intellectual labor that due provision 
is made for the quantity of dull work which must 
be done in stubbing the Thornaby wastes of the 
world.— Fors, IV., pp. 380, 381. 

Facts and System. —All sciences should, I 
think, be taught more for the sake of their facts, 
and less for that of their system, than heretofore. 
Comprehensive and connected views are impossi))le 
to most men; the systems they learn are nothing 
but skeletons to them; but nearly all men can un- 
derstand the relations of a few facts bearing on 
daily business, and to be exemplified in common 
substances. And science will soon be so vast that 
the most comprehensive men will still be narrow, 
ant"l we shall see the fitness of rather teaching our 
youth to concentrate their general intelligence 
highly on given points than scatter it towards an 
infinite horizon fronj Avhich they can fetch nothing, 
and to which they can carry nothing. — Arrows of 
the Chace, I., p. 49. 

Words. — You must get into the habit of looking 
intensely at words, and assuring yourself of their 
meaning, syllable by syllable — nay letter by letter 
.... you might read all the books in the British 
Museum (if you could live long enough), and re- 
main an utterly " illiterate," uneducated person; 
but if you read ten pages of a good book, letter by 
letter, — that is to say, with real accuracy, — you are 
for evermore in some measure an educated per- 
son. . . . 

A well-educated gentleman may not know many 
languages — may not be able to speak any but his 
own — may have read very few books. But what- 
ever language he knows, he knows precisely; what- 
ever word he pronounces he pronounces rightly; 



280 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

above all, he is learned in the peera^'e of words; 
knows the words of true descent and ancient blood, 

at a glance, from words of modern canaille 

An uneducated person may know by memory any 
number of languages, and talk them all, and yet 
truly know not a word of any — not a word even of 
his own. ... It is right that a false Latin quan- 
tity should excite a smile in the House of Commons; 
but it is wrong that a false English meaning should 
7iot excite a frown there. Let the accent of words 
be watched, by all means, but let their meaning be 
Avatched more closely still, and fewer will do the 
work. A few words, Avell chosen and well distin- 
guished, will do work that a thousand cannot, 
when every one is acting, equivocally, in the func- 
tion of another. . . . 

There are masked words abroad which nobody 
understands, but which everybody uses, and most 
people will also light for, live for, or even die for, 
fancying they mean this, or that, or the other, of 
things dear to them : for such words wear cha- 
meleon cloaks — " groundlion '' cloaks, of the color 
of the ground of any man's fancy : on that ground 
they lie in wait, and rend him with a spring from 
it. There were never creatures of prey so mischiev- 
ous, never diplomatists so cunning, never poisoners 
so deadly, as these masked words. — Sesame and 
Lilies, pp. 37, 38. 

If you do not know the Greek alphabet, learn it; 
young or old — girl or boy — whoever you may be, if 
you think of reading seriously (which, of course, 
implies that you have some leisure at command), 
learn your Greek alphabet; then get good diction- 
aries of all these languages, and whenever you are 
in doubt about a word, hunt it down patiently. 
Read Max Miiller's lectures thoroughly, to begin 
with; and, after that, never let a word escape you 
that looks suspicious. It is severe Avork; but you 
will find it, even at first, interesting, and at last, 
endlessly amusing. And the general gain to your 
character, in power and precision, will be quite 
Tiicalcvilable.— (SeA'u'yMe and Lilies- p. 40. 



SOCIAL PHtLOSOPtlYSDUCATION: 281 

Beautiful Spkakixg.— The fouiidatioiial im- 
portance of beautiful speaking has been disgraced 
by the confusion of it with diplomatic oratory, and 
evaded by the vicious notion that it can be taught 
by a master learned in it as a separate art. The 
management of the lips, tongue, and throat may, 
and perhaps should, be so taught; but this is prop- 
erly the first function of the singing-master. Elocu- 
tion is a moral faculty; and no one is lit to be the 
head of a childrens' school who is not both by 
nature and attention a beautiful speaker. 

By attention, I say, for fine elocution means first 
an exquisitely close attention to, and intelligence 
of, the meaning of words, and perfect sympathy 
with what feeling they describe; but indicated al- 
ways with reserve. In this reserve, fine reading and 
speaking, (virtually one art), differ from " recita- 
tion," which gives the statement or sentiment with 
the explanatory accent and gesture of an actor. 
In perfectly pure elocution, on the contrary, the 
accent ought, as a rule, to be much lighter and 
gentler than the natural or dramatic one, and the 
force of it wholly independent of gesture or ex- 
pression of feature. A fine reader should read, a 
great speaker speak, as a judge delivers his charge; 
and the test of his power should be to read or speak 
vuiseen. 

At least an hour of the school-day should be 
spent in listening to the master's or some trustwor- 
thy visitor's reading; but no children should attend 
unless they were really interested; the rest being 
allowed to go on with their other lessons or employ- 
ments. A large average of children, I suppose, are 
able to sew or draw while they yet attend to read- 
ing, and so there might be found a fairly large 
audience, of whom however those Avho were usually 
busy during the lecture should not be called upon 
for any account of what they had heard; but, on 
the contrary, blamed, if they had allowed their 
attention to be diverted by the reading from what 
they were about, to the detriment of their work. 
The real audience consisting of the few for whom. 



282 A RUSKm ANTHOLOGY. 

the book had been specially chosen, should be re- 
quired to give perfect and unbroken attention to 
what they heard; to stop the reader always at any 
Avord or sentence they did not understand, and to 
be prepared for casual examination on the story 
next day. 

I say " on the story," for the reading, whether 
poetry or prose, should always be a story of 
some sort, whether trvie history, travels, romance 
or fairy-tale. In poetry, Chaucer, Spenser, and 
Scott, for the ui^per classes, lighter ballad or fable 
for the lower, contain always some thread of pretty 
adventui-e. No merely didactive or descriptive 
l)<)oks should be permitted in the reading room, 
l)ut so far as they are used at all, studied in the 
same way as granjmars; and Shakespeare, accessible 
always at playtime in the library in small and 
large editions to the young and old alike, should 
never be used as a school book, nor even formally 
or continuously read aloud. He is to be known by 
thinking not mouthing. 

I have used, not unintentionally, the separate 
words " reading room " and library. No school 
should be considered as organized at all, without 
these two rooms, rightly furnished; the reading 
room, with its convenient pulpit and student's 
desks, in good light, skylight if possible, for draw- 
ing, or taking notes — the library with its broad 
tables for laying out books on, and recesses for 
niched reading, and plenty of lateral light kept 
carefully short of glare : both of them well shut off 
from the school room or rooms, in which there 
must be always more or less of noise. — Fors, IV., 
p. 383, 385. 

Children should be taught to see.— The main 
thing which we ought to teach our youth is to see 
something — all that the eyes which God has given 
them are cajjable of seeing. The sum of what werfo 
teach them is to say something. As far as I have 
experience of instruction, no man ever dreams of 
teaching a boy to get to the root of a matter; to 



SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY— EDUCATION. 283 

think it out; to get quit of passion and desire in the 
process of thinking; or to fear no face of man in 
plainly asserting the ascertained result. But to 
say anything in a glib and graceful manner; — to 
give an epigrammatic turn to nothing,— to quench 
the dim perceptions of a feeble adversarj^ and parry 
cunningly the home-thrusts of a strong one, — to in- 
vent blanknesses in sjieech for breathing time, and 
slipperinesses in speech for hiding time, — to pol- 
ish malice to the deadliest edge, shape profession 
to the seemliest shadow, and mask self-interest 
under the fairest pretext,— all these skills we teach 
definitely, as the main arts of business and life. — 
Modern Painters, IV., p. 439. 

Sympathy as as Eleivient of Educatio:!^.— The 
chief vices of education have arisen from the one 
great fallacy of supposing that noble language is a 
communicable trick of grammar and accent, in- 
stead of simply the careful expression of right 
thought. All the virtues of language are, in their 
roots, moral; it becomes accurate if the speaker 
desires to be true; clear, if he speaks with sympathy 
and a desire to be intelligible; powerful, if he has 
earnestness; pleasant, if he has sense of rhj'thm and 
order. . . . The secret of language is the secret of 
sympathy, and its full charm is possible only to the 
gentle. . . . No noble nor right style was ever yet 
founded but out of a sincere heart. — Lectures on 
Art, pp. 48, 49. 

No man can read the evidence of labor who is 
not himself laborious, for he does not know what 
the work costs: nor can he read the evidence of 
true passion if he is not passionate; nor of gentle- 
ness if he is not gentle : and the most subtle signs 
of fault and weakness of character he can only 
judge by having had the same faults to fight with. 
— Lectures on Art, p. 51. 

Agaixst Stupidity the Gods fight ia' a^aijv.— 
In education, true justice is curiously unequal — if 
you choose to give it a hard name, iniquitous. The 



284 A BUS KIN ANTHOLOaY. 

riylit law of it is that you are to take most pains 
with the best material. Many conscientious masters 
will plead for the exactly contrary iniquity, and 
say you should take the most pains with the dullest 
boys. But that is not so (only you must be very 
careful that you know which are the dull boys; 
for the cleverest look often very like them). Never 
Avaste pains on bad ground; let it remain rough, 
though properly looked after and cared for; it will 
be of best service so; but spare no labor on the 
good, or on what has in it the cajDacity of good. 
The tendency of modern help and care is quite 
morbidly and madly in reverse of this great princi- 
ple. Benevolent persons are always, by preference, 
busy on the essentially bad; and exhaust them- 
selves in their efforts to get maximum intellect 
from cretins and maximum virtue from criminals. 
Meantime, they take no care to ascertain (and for 
the most part when ascertained, obstinately refuse 
to remove) the continuous sources of cretinism and 
crime, and suffer the most splendid material in 
child-nature to wander neglected about the streets, 
until it has become rotten to the degree in which 
they feel prompted to take an interest in it. — Fors, 
I., p. 114. 

The greatness or smallness of a man is, in the 
most conclusive sense, determined for him at his 
birth, as strictly as it is determined for a fruit 
whether it is to be a currant or an apricot. Educa- 
tion, favorable circumstances, resolution, and in- 
dustry can do much; in a certain sense they do 
tVier ything ; that is to say, they determine whether 
the poor apricot shall fall in the form of a green 
bead, blighted by an east wind, shall be ti'odden 
under foot, or whether it shall exisand into tender 
l)ride, and sweet brightness of golden velvet. But 
apricot out of currant, — great man out of small, — 
did never yet art or effort make. . . . 

Therefore it is, that every system of teaching is 
false which holds forth " great art " as in any wise 
to be taught to students, or even to be aimed at 



SOCIAL riTILOSOrilY— EDUCATION'. 285 

by them. Great art is precisely that which never 
was, nor will be taught, it iff pre-eminently and 
finally the expression of the spirits of great men; 
so that the only wholesome teaching is that which 
simply endeavors to fix those characters of noble- 
ness in the pupil's mind, of which it seems easily 
susceptible; and without holding out to him, as a 
possible or even probable result, that he should 
ever paint like Titian, or carve like Michael An- 
gelo, enforces upon him the manifest possibility, 
and assured duty, of endeavoring to draw in a man- 
ner at least honest and intelligible; and cultivates 
in him those general charities of heart, sincerities 
of thought, and graces of habit which are likely to 
lead him, throughout life, to prefer openness to 
affectation, realities to shadows, and beauty to cor- 
ruption. — 3Iodern Painters, III., p. Gl. 

The vulgar and incomparal)ly false saying of 
Macaulay's, that the intellectual giants of one age 
become the intellectual pigmies of the next, has 
been the text of too many sermons lately preached 
to you. You think you are going to do better 
things — each of you — than Titian and Phidias- 
write better than Virgil — think more wisely than 
Solomon. My good young people, this is the fool- 
ishest, quite pre-eminently — perhaps almost the 
harmfullest — notion that could possibly be put 
into your empty little eggshells of heads. There is 
not one in a million of you who can ever be great 
in any thing. To be greater than the greatest that 
have been, is permitted i:)erhaps to one man in 
Euroi^e in the course of two or three centuries. 
But because you cannot be Handel and Mozart- 
is it any reason why you should not learn to sing 
" Ciod save the Queen " properly, when you have 
a mind to ? — A Joy For Ever, p. 138. 

IIOW TO BE AS WISE AS ONE'S FATHERS-— You 

have all been taught by Lord Macaulay and his 
school that because you have carpets instead of 
rushes for your feet; and feather-beds instead 
of fern for your backs; and kickshaws instead of 



286 A RUSKIir ANTHOLOGY. 

beef for your eating; and Drains instead of Holy 
Wells for your drinking; — that, therefore, you are 
the Cream of Creation; and every one of you a 
seven-headed Solomon. Stay in those pleasant 
circumstances and convictions if you please; but 
don't accuse your roughly bred and fed fathers of 
telling lies about the aspect the earth and sky bore 
to them, — till you have trodden the earth as they, 
barefoot, and seen the heavens as they, face to face. 
If you care to see and to know for yourselves, you 
may do it with little pains; you need not do any 
great thing, you need not keep one eye open and 
the other shut for ten years over a microscoi^e, nor 
fight your way through icebergvS and darkness to 
knowledge of the celestial pole. Simply do as much 
as king after king of the Saxons did, — put rough 
shoes on your feet, and a rough cloak on your 
shoulders, and walk to Rome and back. Sleep by 
the roadside, when it is fine, in the first outhouse 
you can find, when it is wet, and live on bread and 
water, with an onion or two, all the way; and if 
the experiences M'hich you will have to relate on 
your return do not, as may well be, deserve the 
name of spiritvial, at all events you will not be 
disposed to let other people regard them either as 
Poetry or Fiction.— P/casM/TS of England, p. 24. 

. To Certain Students op Oxford University. 
—Your youthful days in this place are to you the 
dipping of your feet in the brim of the river, which 
is to be manfully stemmed by you all your days; 
not drifted with,— nor toyed upon. Fallen leaves 
enough itis strewn with, of the flowers of the forest; 
moraine enough it bears, of the ruin of the brave. 
Your task is to cross it; your doom may be to go 
down with it, to the depths out of which there is no 
crying. Traverse it, staff in hand, and with loins 
girded, and with whatsoever law of Heaven you 
know, for your light. On the other side is the 
Promised Land, the Land of the Leal.— ^r^ of Eng- 
land, p. 52. 

An Ideal University Park.— I will even ven- 



SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY— EDUCATION. 287 

ture to tell you my hope, though I shall be dead 
long before its possible fulfilment, that one day the 
English people will, indeed, so far recognize what 
education means as to surround this University of 
Oxford with the loveliest park in England, twenty 
miles square; that they will forbid, in that environ- 
ment, every unclean, mechanical, and vulgar trade 
and manufacture, as any man would forbid them 
in his own garden; — that they will abolish every 
base and ugly building, and nest of vice and misery, 
as they would east out a devil;— that the streams 
of the Isis and Cherwell will be kept pure and quiet 
among their fields and trees; and that, within this 
park, every English Avild flower that can bloom in 
lowland will be suffered to grow in luxuriance, and 
every living creature that haunts wood and stream 
know that it has happy refuge. — Eagle's Nest, p. 
109. 



THE EDUCATION OP CHILDREN. 

The relatio:n by Children of what they 
HAVE SEEliT OR HEARD. — No discipline is of more 
use to a child's character, with threefold bear- 
ing on intellect, memory, and morals, than the 
being accustomed to relate accurately what it has 
lately done and seen. . . . Children ought to be 
frequently required to give account of themselves, 
though always alloAved reserve; if they ask : " I 
would rather not say, mamma," should be accepted 
at once with serene confidence on occasion; but of 
the daily walk and work the child should take pride 
in giving full account, if questioned; the parent or 
tutor closely lopijing exaggeration, investigating 
elision, guiding into order, and aiding in expres- 
sion. The finest historical style may be illustrated 
in the course of the narration of the events of the 
day.— Fors, IV., p. 385. 

Education for Different Spheres of Life. — 
For cliildren whose life is to be in cities, the sub- 



288 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

jects of study should be, as far as their dispositidi 
will allow of it, mathematics and the arts; for cliii- 
dren who are to live in the country, natural history 
of birds, insects, and plants, together with agri- 
culture taught practically; and for children who 
are to be seamen, physical geography, astronomy, 
and the natural history of sea fish and sea birds.— 
Time and Tide, p. 70. 

Nature a fine Educator. — For prolonged en- 
tertainment, no picture can be compared with the 
wealth of interest which may be found in the herb- 
age of the poorest field, or blossoms of the narrow- 
est coi5se. As suggestive of supernatural power, 
the passing away of a fitful rain-cloud, or opening 
of dawn, are in their change and mystery more 
pregnant than any pictures. A child would, I 
suppose, receive a religious lesson from a flower 
more willingly than from a print of one, and might 
be taught to understand the nineteenth Psalm, on 
a starry night, better than by diagrams of the con- 
stellations. — 3Iodern Painters, V., p. 214. 

There used to be, thirty years ago, a little rivulet 

of the Wandel, about an inch deep, which ran over 

the carriage-road and under fi foot-bridge just 

under the last chalk hill near Croydon. Alas! 

men came and went; and it — did not go on forever. 

It has long since been bricked over by the parish 

authorities; but there was more education in that 

stream with its minnows than you could get out of 

a hundred pounds spent yearly in the parish 

schools, even though you were to spend every 

farthing of it in teaching the nature of oxygen and 

hydrogen, and the names, and rate per minute, 

of all the rivers in Asia and America. — Lectures on 

Art, p. 77. 

y 
Learning by Heart. — Learning by heart, and 

repitition with perfect accent and cultivated voice, 

should be made quite principal branches of school 

discipline up to the time of going to the university. 

And of writings to be learned by heart, among 

other i^assages of disputable jihilosophj' and perfect 



SOCIAL PHILOSOPnT— EDUCATION. 289 

poetry, I include certain chapters of the — now for 
the most part forgotten — wisdom of Solomon; and 
of these, there is one selected portion which I should 
recommend not only schoolboys and girls, but per- 
sons of every age, if they don't know it, to learn 
forthwith, as the shortest summary of Solomon's 
wisdom; — namely, the seventeenth chapter of Prov- 
erbs, which being only twenty-eight verses long, 
ujay be fastened in the dullest memory at the rate 
of a verse a day in the shortest month of the year. 
Storvi Cloud, Lect. II., § 20. 

The two Chivalries— of the Horse and the 
Wave. — You little know how much is implied in 
the two conditions of boys' education, . . . that 
they shall all learn either to ride or sail : nor by 
what constancy of law the power of highest disci- 
pline and honor is vested by Nature in the two 
chivalries — of the Horse and the Wave. Both are 
significative of the right command of man over his 
oAvn passions; but they teach, farther, the strange 
mystery of relation that exists between his soul 
and the wild natural elements on the one hand, 
and the wild lower animals on the other. — Fors, I., 
p. 119. 

The Education op Boys in St. George's Guild. 
— In my own school of St. George I mean to make 
the study of Christianity a true piece of intellectual 
work; my boys shall at least know what their 
fathers believed, before they make up their own 
wise minds to disbelieve it. They shall be infidels, 
if they choose, at thirty; but only students, and 
very modest ones, at fifteen. But I shall at least 
ask of modern science so much help as shall enable 
me to begin to teach them at that age the physical 
laws relating to their own bodies, openly, thor- 
oughly, and with awe; and of modern civilization, 
I shall ask so much help as may enable me to teach 
them what is indeed right, and what wrong, for the 
citizen of a state of noble humanity to do, and per- 
mit to be done, by others, unaccused. — Arroivs of 
the CJiace, II., p. 136. 



290 A BUSKII^r ANTHOLOGY. 

The Study of Grammar.— I am at total issue 
with most preceptors as to the use of grammar to 
any body. In a recent examination of our Coniston 
school I observed that the thing the children did 
exactly best, was their parsing, and the thing they 
did exactly worst, their repetition. Could stronger 
proof be given that the dissection of a sentence is 
as bad a way to the understanding of it as the dis- 
section of a beast to the biography of it ? — Fors, 
IV., p. 379. 

Lying. — It should be pointed out to young people 
with continual earnestness that the essence of lying 
is in deception, not in words; a lie may be told by 
silence, by equivocation, by the accent on a sylla- 
ble, by a glance of the eye attaching a peculiar 
significance to a sentence; and all these kinds of 
lies are worse and baser by many degrees than a 
lie plainly worded.— 3Ioder7i Painters, V., p. 290. 

Children taught Self-reliance. — Children 
should have their times of being off duty, like 
soldiers; and when once the obedience, if required, 
is certain, the little creature should be very early 
put for periods of practice in complete command 
of itself; set on the barebacked horse of its own 
will, and left to break it by its own strength. — 
Praeterita, II. 

The Study of History.— Every fairly educated 
European boy or girl ought to learn the history of 
five cities — Athens, Rome, Venice, Florence, and 
London; that of London including, or at least com- 
pelling in parallel study, some knowledge also of 
the history of Paris. — Pleasures of England, p. 8. 

I don't know any Roman history except the two 
first books of Livy, and little bits here and there ol 
the following six or seven. I only just know enough 
about it to be able to make out the bearings and 
meaning of any fact that I now learn. The greater 
number of modern historians know, (if honest 
enough even for that,) the facts, or something that 
may possibly be like the facts, but haven't the 
least notion of the meaning of them. So that, 



SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY— EDUCATION. 291 

though I have to find out everything that I want 
in Smith's Dictionary, like any schoolboy, I can 
usually tell you the significance of what I so find, 
better than jierhaps even Mr. Smith himself could. 
— Proserpina, p. 100. 

The Wordsworth Schoolhouse.— I went only 
this last month to see the school in which Words- 
worth was educated. It i-emains, as it was then, a 
school for peasant lads only; and the doors of its 
little library, therefore, hang loose on their decayed 
hinges; and one side of the schoolroom is utterly 
dark — the window on that side having been long 
ago walled up, either " because of the window-tax, 
or perhaps it had got broken," suggested the guar- 
dian of the place.— i^'ors, III., p. 53. 

English Parents' idea op Education.— I re- 
ceive many letters from parents respecting the edu- 
cation of their children. . . . They never seek, as 
far as I can make out, an education good in Itself; 
the conception of abstract rightness in training 
rarely seems reached by the writers. But an edu- 
cation " which shall keep a good coat on my son's 
back; — an education which shall enable him to 
ring with confidence the visitors' bell at double- 
belled doors; — education which shall result ulti- 
mately in establishment of a double-belled door to 
his own house; in a word, which shall lead to 
" advancement in life." — Sesame and Lilies, p. 28. 

Birds do not praise God in their Songs. — This 
London is the principal nest of men in the world; 
and I was standing in the centre of it. In the shops 
of Fleet Street and Ludgate Hill, on each side of 
me, I do not doubt I could have bought any quan- 
tity of books for children, which by way of giving 
them religious, as opposed to secular, instruction, 
informed them that birds praised God in their 
songs. Now, though on the one hand, you may be 
very certain that bii'ds are not machines, on the 
other hand it is just as certain that they have not 
the smallest intention of praising God In their 
songs; and that we cannot prevent the religious 



292 A liUSKIN ANTHOLOaY. 

education of our cliildern more utterly than by be- 
ginning it in lies.— Eagle's Nest, p. 43. 

Boys and Squirrels. — As of all quadrupeds 
there is none so ugly or so miserable as the sloth, 
so, take him for all in all, there is none so beautiful, 
so happy, so wonderful as the squirrel. Innocent 
in all his ways, harndess in his food, i^layful as a 
kitten, but without cruelty, and surpassing the 
fantastic dexterity of the monkey, with the grace 
and the brightness of a bird, the little dark-eyed 
miracle of the forest glances from brancli to branch 
more like a sunbeam than a living creature : it leaps, 
and darts, and twines, where it will; — a chamois is 
slow to it; and a panther, clumsy: grotesque as a 
gnome, gentle as a fairy, delicate as the silken 
plumes of the rush, beautiful and strong like the 
spiral of a fern, — it haunts you, listens for you, 
hides from you, looks for you, loves you, as if the 
angel that walks with your children had made it 
himself for their heavenly plaything. 

And this is what you do, to thwart alike your 
child's angel, and liis God, — you take him out of 
the woods into the town, — you send him from 
modest labor to competitive schooling,— you force 
him out of the fresh air into the dusty bone-house, 
— you show him the skeleton of the dead monster, 
and make him pour over its rotten cells and wire- 
stitched joints, and vile extinct capacities of de- 
struction, — and when he is choked and sickened 
with useless horror and putrid air, you let him — re- 
gretting the waste of time — go out for once to play 
again by the woodside; — and the first squirrel he 
sees, he throws a stone at ! — Deucalion, pp. 145, 146. 

The best dog I ever had was a buU-teri-ier, whose 
whole object in life was to please me, and nothing 
else; though, if he found he could please me by hold- 
ing on with his teeth to an inch-thick stick, and be- 
ing swung round in the air as fast as I could turn, 
that was his own idea of entirely felicitous existence. 
1 don't like, therefore, hearing of a bulldog's being 
ill-treated; but I can tell you a little thing that 



SOCIAL PmLOSOPHY— EDUCATION. 293 

chanced to me at Coniston the other day, more 
horrible, in the deep elements of it, than all the 
dog, bulldog, or bull fights, or baitings, of England, 
Spain, and California. A fine boy, the son of an 
amiable English clergyman, had come on the coach- 
box round the Water-head to see me, and was 
telling me of the delightful drive he had had. 
" Oh," he said, in the triumph of his enthusiasm, 
"and just at the corner of the wood, there was 
such a big squirrel ! and the coachman threw a 
stone at it, and nearly hit it ! " 

"Thoughtlessness — only thoughtlessness " — say 
you — proud father ? Well, perhaps not much 
worse than that. But how could it be much worse ? 
Thoughtlessness is precisely the chief public calam- 
ity of our day; and when it comes to the pitch, in a 
clergyman's child, of not thinking that a stone hurts 
what it hits of living things, and not caring for 
the daintiest, dextrousest, innocentest living thingin 
the noi'thern forests of God's earth, except as a brown 
excrescence to be knocked off their branches, — nay, 
good pastor of Christ's lambs, believe me, your boy 
had better have been employed in thoughtfully and 
resolutely stoning St. Stephen — if any St. Stephen 
is to be found in these days, when men not only 
can't see heaven opened, but don't so much as care 
to see it, shut.— i^'or^, II., p. 312. 

Ideal of ax Elementary School.— Every parish 
school to have gai-den, playground, and cultivable 
land round it, or belonging to it, si^acious enough to 
employ the scholars in fine weather mostly out of 
dooi's. 

Attached to the building, a children's library, 
in which the scholars Avho cai'e to read may learn 
that art as deftly as they like, by themselves, help- 
ing each other without troubling the master^ — a 
suflBcient laboratory always, in which shall be 
specimens of all common elements of natural sub- 
stances, and where simple chemical, optical, and 
pneumatic experiments may be shown; and accord- 
ing to the size and importance of the school, at- 



294 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

taclied workshops, many or few, — but always a 
carpenter's, and first of those added in the better 
schools, a potter's. 

In the school Itself, the things taught will be 
music, geometry, astronomy, botany, zoology, to 
all; drawing, and history, for childi-en who have 
gift for either. And finally, to all children of 
whatever gift, grade, or age, the laws of Honor, the 
habit of Truth, the Virtue of Humility, and the 
Happiness of Love.— i^ors, IV., p. 369. 

The Decorations of School Rooms.— Many a 
study aj^pears dull or painful to a boy, when it is 
pursued on a blotted deal desk, under a wall with 
nothing on it but scratches and pegs, which would 
have been pursued pleasantly enough in a curtained 
corner of his father's library, or at the lattice win- 
dow of his cottage. Nay, my own belief is, that the 
best study of all is the most beautiful; and that a 
quiet glade of forest, or the nook of a lake shore, are 
worth all the schooh'ooms in Christendom, when 
once you are past the multiplication table; but be 
that as it may, there is no question at all but that 
a time ought to come in the life of a well trained 
youth, when he can sit at a Avriting table without 
wanting to throw the inkstand at his neighbor; 
and when also he will feel more capable of certain 
efforts of mind with beautiful and refined forms 
about him than with ugly ones. When that time 
comes he ought to be advanced into the decorated 
schools; and this advance ought to be one of the 
important and honorable epochs of his life. . . . 

Now, the use of your decorative painting would 
be, in myriads of ways, to animate [the scholars'] 
history for them, and to put the living aspect of 
13ast things before their eyes as faithfully as in- 
telligent invention can; so that the master shall 
have nothing to do but once to point to the school- 
room walls, and forever afterwards the meaning of 
any word would be fixed in a boy's mind in the 
best possible way. Is it a question of classical dress 
—what a tunic was like, or a chlamys, or a peplus ? 



. SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY— EDUCATION. 295 

At this day, you have to point to some vile wood- 
cut, in the middle of a dictionary page, rejjresent- 
ing the thing hung upon a stick; but then, you 
would point to a hundred figures, wearing the 
actual dress, in its fiery colors, in all the actions of 
various stateliness or strength; you Avould under- 
stand at once how it fell round the people's limbs 
as they stood, how it drifted from their shoulders 
as they went, how it veiled their faces as they wept, 
how it covered their heads in the day of battle.— A 
Joi/ For Ever, pp. 71, 73. 



TEACHING SCIENCE TO CHILDREN. 

The Education of a little Girl. — I don't in 
the least want a book to tell her how many species 
of bees there are; nor what grounds there may be 
for suspecting that one species is another species; 
nor why Mr. B. is convinced that what Mr. A. 
considered tAvo species are indeed one species; nor 
how conlusively Mr. C has proved that what Mr. 
B. described as a new species is an old species. 
Neither do I want a book to tell her what a bee's 
inside is like, nor whether it has its brains in the 
small of its back, or nowliere in particular, like a 
modern political economist; nor whether the mor- 
phological nature of the sternal portion of the 
thorax should induce us strictly, to call it the pro- 
sternum, or may ultimately be found to present no 
serious inducement of that nature. But I want a 
book to tell her, for instance, how a bee buzzes; and 
how, and by what instrumental touch, its angry 
buzz differs from its pleased or simply busy buzz.* 
—Fors, II., p. 359. 

[* So Lockhai-t says of Sir Walter Scott, that lie detested the 
whole generation of modern school books with their attempt to 
teach scientific niinntire; but delighted cordially in those of 
the preceding age, which by addressing the imagination, ob- 
tained thereby, as lie thonglit, the best chance of imparting 
solid knowledge and stirring up the mind to an interest in 
graver studies.— For fuller statements of lluskin on teaching 
science to children, consult Proserpina, passim, and Fors Clavi- 
gera, 1»75, Letter 51.J 



296 A RVSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

Natural History.— I have often been unable, 
through sickness or anxiety, to follow uiy own art 
work, but I have never found natural history fail 
me, either as a delight or a medicine. But for 
children it must be curtly and wisely taught. We 
must show them things, not tell them names. A 
deal-chest of drawers is worth many books to them, 
and a well-guided country walk worth a hundred 
lectures. — Arrows of the Chace, L, p. 199. 

Botany.— The most pressing need is for a simple 
handbook of the wild flowers of every country — 
French flowers for French children, Teuton for 
Teuton, Saxon for Saxon, Highland for Scot — se- 
verely accurate in outline, and exquisitely colored 
6y hand (again the best possible practice in our 
drawing schools); with a text regardless utterly of 
Any but the most popular names, and of all micro- 
iscopic observation; but teaching children the beau- 
ty of plants as they grow, and their culinary uses 
when gathered; and that, except for such uses, they 
should be left growing. — Fors, IV., pp. 391. 

Botanists have discovered some wonderful con- 
nection between nettles and figs, which a cowboy, 
who will never see a ripe fig in his life, need not be 
at all troubled about; but it will be interesting to 
him to know what effect nettles have on hay, and 
what taste they will give to i^orridge; and it will 
give him nearly a new life if he can be got but once, 
in a spring-time, to look well at the beautiful circ- 
let of the white nettle blossom, and work out with 
his sohoolmaster the curves of its petals, and the 
waj^ it is set on its central mast. So, the principle 
of chemical equivalents, beautiful as it is, matters 
far less to a peasant boy, and even to most sons of 
gentlemen, than their knowledge how to find 
whether the water is wholesome in the back-kitchen 
cistern, or whether the seven-acre field wants sand 
or chalk. — A Joy For Fver, p. 91. 

It may not be the least necessary that a peasant 
should know algebra, or Greek, or drawing. But 
it may, perhaps, be both possible and expedient 



SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY— EBUCATIOX. 297 

that he should be able to arrange his thoughts 
clearly, to speak his own language intelligibly, to 
discern between right and wrong, to govern his 
passions, and to receive such pleasures of ear or 
sight a,s his life may render accessible to him. I 
Avould not have him taught the science of music; 
but most assuredly I would have him taught to 
sing. I would not teach him the science of drawing; 
but certainly I would teach him to see; without 
learning a single term of botany, he should know 
accurately the habits and uses of every leaf and 
flower in his fields; and unencumbered by any 
theories of moral and political philosophy, he 
should help his neighbor, and disdain a bribe. — 
Modern Painters, V., p. 354. 

ExAMi:vATioN Paper for a Botanical Glass.— 

1. State the habit of such and such a plant. 

2. Sketch its leaf, and a portion of its ramifica- 
tions (memory). 

3. Explain the mathematical laws of its growth 
and structure. 

4. Give the composition of its juices in different 
seasons. 

5. Its uses? Its relations to other families of 
plants, and conceivable uses beyond those known ? 

6. Its commercial value in London ? Mode of 
cultivation ? 

7. Its mythological meaning? The commonest 
or most beautiful fables respecting it? 

8. Quote any important references to it by great 
poets. 

9. Time of its introduction. 

10. Describe its consequent influence on civiliza- 
tion. 

Of all these ten questions, there is not one which 
does not test the student in other studies than 
botany. — Arrotcs of the Chace, I., p. 45. 

Astronomy.— The beginning of all is to teach the 
child the places and names of the stars, when it can 
see them, and to accustom it to watch for the 
nightly change of those visible. The register of the 



298 A BUSKIN- ANTHOLOGY. 

visible stars of first magnitude and planets should 
be printed largely and intelligibly for every day of 
the year, and set by the schoolmaster every day; 
and the arc described by the sun, Avith its following 
and preceding stars, from point to jioint of the 
horizon visible at the place, should be drawn, at 
least weekly, as the first of the drawing exercises. — 
Fors, IV., p. 389. 

Geography. — Of the cheap barbarisms and abor- 
tions of modern cram, the frightful method of 
representing mountain chains by black bars is 
about the most ludicrous and abominable. All 
mountain chains are in groups, not bars, and their 
watersheds are often entirely removed from their 
points of greatest elevation. — Fors, TV-, p. 388. 

[On Botany, see also Part IV.] 



EDUCATION IN ART.* 

If you desire to draw, that you may represent 
something that you care for, you will advance 
SAviftly and safely. If you desire to draw, that you 
may make a beautiful drawing, you will never 
make one. — Lawsof Fesole, p. 13. 

Teaching to be adjusted to Capacity. — A 
young person's critical power should be developed 
by the presence around him of the best models 
into the excellence of loMch Ms knoioledge 2^ermits 
him to enter. He should be encouraged, above all 
things, to form and express judgment of his own; 
not as if his judgment were of any importance as 
related to the excellence of the thing, but that both 
his master and he may know precisely in what 
state his mind is. He should be told of an Albert 
Diirer engraving, " That ?'s good, whether you like 
it or not; but be sure to determine whether you do 

[* On the arts as a brancli of Education, see Arrows of the 
Chace, I., pp. 39-46; and the Supplement to A Joy For Ever; coni' 
pare also Sesame and Lilies.] 



SOCIAL PIIILOSOPHY^EDUCATIoy. 299 

or do not, and why." All formal expressions of 
reasons for opinion, such as a boy could catch up 
and repeat, should be Avithheld like poison; and all 
models which are too good for him should be kept 
out of his way. Contemplation of works of art, 
without understanding them, jades the faculties 
and enslaves the intelligence. A Rembrandt etch- 
ing is a better example to a boy than a finished 
Titian, and a cast from a leaf than one of the Elgin 
marbles. — Arrows of the Chace, I., p. 42. 

Illuminated Writing.— Every scliool should be 
furnislied witli progressive examples, in fac-simile, 
of beautiful illuminated writing : for nothing could 
be more conducive to the progress of general 
scholarship and taste than that the first natural 
instincts of clever children for the imitation or, 
often, the invention of picture writing, should be 
guided and stimulated by perfect models in their 
own kind.— Fors, IV., p. 389. 

Proportion. — Make your studies always of the 
real size of things. A man is to be drawn the size 
of a man, and a cherry the size of a cherry. 

" But I cannot draw an elephant his real size ? " 

There is no occasion for you to draw an elephant. 

"But nobody can draw Mont Blanc his real 
size ? " 

No. Therefore nobody can draw Mont Blanc at 
all; but only a distant view of Mont Blanc. You 
may also draw a distant view of a man, and of an 
elephant, if you like; you must take care that it is 
seen to be so, and not mistaken for a drawing of a 
pigmy, or a mouse, near. 

"But there is a great deal of good miniature- 
painting?" 

Yes, and a great deal of fine cameo-cutting. But 
I am going to teach you to be a painter, not a 
locket-decorator, or medallist. — Laws of Fesole, 
p. 18. 

Color.— You ought to love color, and to think 
nothing quite beautiful or jierfect without it; and 
if you really do love it, for its own sake, and are 



m A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

not merely desirous to color because you think 
painting a finer thing than drawing, there is some 
chance you may color well. Nevertheless, you 
need not hope ever to produce anything more than 
pleasant helps to memory, or useful and suggestive 
sketches in color, unless you mean to be wholly an 
artist. You may, in the time which other vocations 
leave at your disposal, produce finished, beautiful, 
and masterly drawings in light and shade. But to 
color well, requires your life. It cannot be done 
cheaper. The difficulty of doing right is increased 
— not twofold nor threefold, but a thousandfold, 
and more — by the addition of color to your work. 
If you sing at all, you must sing sweetly; and if 
you color at all, you must color rightly. Give up 
all the form, rather than the slightest part of the 
color : just as, if you felt yourself in danger of a 
false note, you would give up the word and sing 
a meaningless sound, if you felt that so you could 
save the note. . . . An ill-colored picture could be 
no more admitted into the gallery of any rightly 
constituted Academy, or Society of Painters, than 
a howling dog into a concert. — Laws of F6sole, 
pp. 79, 83. 

The Vale of Tempe.— I wish I could ask you to 
draw, instead of the Alps, the crests of Parnassus 
and Olympus, and the ravines of ^elphi and of 
Tempe. I have not loved the arts of Greece as 
others have; yet I love them, and her, so much, 
that it is to me simply a standing marvel how 
scholars can endure for all these centuries, during 
which their chief education has been in the lan- 
guage and policy of Greece, to have only the names 
of her hills and rivers upon their lips, and never 
one line of conception of them in their mind's sight. 
Which of us knows what the valley of Sparta is 
like, or the great mountain vase of Arcadia ? which 
of us, except in mere airy syllabling of names, 
knows aught of "sandy Ladon's lilied banks, or 
old Lycseus, or Cyllene hoar ? "—Lectures on Art, 
p. 73. 



SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY— EDUCATION. 301 

To FOSTER Art-gknius IN A YouTH.— Kiiow once 
for all, that a poet on canvas is exactly the same 
species of creature as a poet in song, and nearly 
every error in our methods of teaching will be done 
away with. For who among us now thinks of 
bringing men up to be poets ?— of producing poets 
by any kind of general recipe or method of culti- 
vation ? Suppose even that we see in youth that 
which we hope may, in its development, become 
a power of this kind, should we instantly, suppos- 
ing that we wanted to make a poet of him, and 
nothing else, forbid him all quiet, steady, rational 
labor ? Should we force him to perpetual spinning 
of new crudities out of his boyish brain, and set 
before him, as the only objects of his study, the 
laws of versification which criticism has supposed 
itself to discover in the works of previous writers ? 
. . . But if we had sense, should we not rather 
restrain and bridle the first flame of invention in 
early youth, heaping material on it as one would 
on the first sparks and tongues of a fire which we 
desired to feed into greatness ? Should we not 
educate the whole intellect into general strength, 
and all the affections into warmth and honesty, 
and look to heaven for the rest "i—Pre-Raphael- 
itism, p. 17. 

The greatest Art cannot be taught.— The 
very words "School of Design" involve the pro- 
foundest of Art fallacies. Drawing may be taught 
by tutors : but Design only by Heaven; and to every 
scholar who thinks to sell his insi^iration Heaven 
refuses its help \—Laws of Fesole, p. 8. 

Some ten or twelve years ago, when I was first 
actively engaged in Art teaching, a young Scottish 
student came up to London to piat himself under 
me, having taken many prizes (justly, with respect 
to the qualities looked for by the judges) in various 
schools of Art. He worked under me very earnestly 
and patiently for some time; and I was able to 
praise his doings, in what I thought very high 
terms', nevertheless, there remained always a look 



302 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

of mortification on his face, after he had been 
praised, however unquahfiedly. At last, he could 
hold no longer, but one day, when I had been more 
than usually complimentary, turned to me with an 
anxious, yet not unconfident expression, and asked; 
" Do you think, Sir, that 1 shall ever draw as well 
as Turner?" I paused for a second or two, being 
much taken aback; and then answered,* " It is far 
more likely you should be made Emperor of All 
the Russias. There is a new Emperor every fifteen 
or twenty years on the average; and by strange 
hap, and fortunate cabal, anybody might be made 
Emperor. But there is only one Turner in five 
hundred years, and God decides, without any 
admission of auxiliary cabal, what piece of clay his 
soul is to be put in." 

It was the first time that I had been brought into 
direct collision with the modern system of prize- 
giving aii?l competition ; and the mischief of it was, 
in the sequel, clearly shown to me, and tragically. 
This youth had the finest powers of mechanical exe- 
cution I have ever met with, but was quite incapa- 
ble of invention, or strong intellectual effort of any 
kind. Had he been taught early and thoroughly 
to know his place, and be content with his faculty, 
he would have been one of the happiest and most 
serviceable of men. But, at the art schools, he got 
prize after prize for his neat handling; and having, 
in his restricted imagination, no power of discerning 
the qualities of great work, all the vanity of his 
nature was brought out unchecked; so that, being 
intensely industrious and conscientious, as well as 
vain (it is a Scottish combination of character not 
unfi'equentf), he naturally expected to become one 
of the greatest of men. My answer not only morti- 



* I do not mean that I answered in these words, but to the 
effect of them, at greater length. 

t We English are usually bad altogether in a harmonious 
way, and only quite insolent when we are quite good-for- 
nothing; the least good in us shows itself in a measure of mod- 
esty ; but many Scotch natures, of fine capacity otherwise, are 
rendered entirely abortive by conceit. 



SOCIAL PHILOSorHY—EDVGATION. 303 

fied. but angei-ed hiiu, and made him suspicious 
of me; he thought I wanted to keep his talents from 
being fairly displayed, and soon afterwards asked 
leave (he was then in my employment as well as 
under my teaching) to put himself under another 
master. I gave him leave at once, telling him, "if 
he found the other master no better to his mind, 
he might come back to me whenever he chose." 
The other master giving him no more hope of ad- 
vancement than I did, he came back to me; I sent 
him into Switzerland, to draw Swiss architecture; 
but instead of doing what I bid him, quietly, and 
nothing else, he set himself, with furious industry, 
to draw snowy mountains and clouds, that he 
might show me he could draw like Albert Durer, or 
Turner; — spent his strength in agony of vain effort; 
— caught cold, fell into decline, and died. How 
many actual deaths are now annually caused by 
the strain and anxiety of competitive examination, 
it would startle us all if we could know: but the mis- 
chief done to the best faculties of the brain in all 
cases, and the miserable confusion and absurdity 
involved in the system itself, which offers every 
place, not to the man who is indeed fitted for it, 
but to the one who, on a given day, chances to 
have bodily strength enough to stand the cruellest 
strain, are evils infinite in their consequences, and 
more lamentable than many deaths. — Fo7's, I., 
p. 117. 

Rapid Drawing.— I have seen a great master's 
hand flying over the jDaper as fast as gnats over a 
pool; and the ink left by the light grazing of it, 
so pale, that it gathered into shade like gray lead; 
and yet the contours, and fine notes of character, 
seized with the accuracy of Holbein. But gift of 
this kind is a sign of the rarest artistic faculty and 
tact : you need not attempt to gain it, for if it is 
in you, and you work continually, the power will 
come of itself; and if it is not in you, will never 
come; nor, even if you could win it, is the attain- 
ment wholly desirable. Drawings thus executed 



304 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

are always imperfect, however beautiful : they are 
out of harmony with the general manner and 
scheme of serviceable art; and always, so far as I 
have observed, the sign of some deficiency of ear- 
nestness in the worker.— ia?«5 of Fesole, p. 30. 

Measurement in Drawing. — The question of 
measurement is, as you are probably aware, one 
much vexed in art schools; but it is determined 
indisputably by the very first words written by 
Lionardo : "II giovane deve prima imparare pro- 
spettiva, per le misure d' ogni cosa." 

Without absolute precision of measurement, it is 
certainly impossible for you to learn perspective 
rightly; and as far as I can judge, impossible to learn 
anything else rightly. And in my past experience 
of teaching, I have found that such precision is of 
all things the most difficult to enforce on the pupils. 
It is easy to persuade to diligence, or provoke to 
enthusiasm; but I have found it hitherto impossible 
to humiliate one student into perfect accuracy. — 
Lectures on Art, p. 95. 

Errors op the existing popular School op 
Drawing. — The first error in that system is the 
forbidding accuracy of measurement, and enforcing 
the practice of guessing at the size of objects. Now 
it is indeed often well to outline at first by the eye, 
and afterwards to correct the drawing by measure- 
ment; but under the present method, the student 
finishes his inaccurate drawing to the end, and his 
mind is thus, during the whole progress of his 
work, accustomed to falseness in every contour. 
Such a practice is not to be characterized as merely 
harmful, — it is ruinous. No student who has sus- 
tained the injury of being thus accustomed to false 
contours, can ever recover precision of sight. Nor 
is this all : he cannot so much as attain to the first 
conditions of art judgment. For a fine work of art 
differs from a vulgar one by subtleties of line which 
the most perfect measurement is not, alone, delicate 
enough to detect; but to whicli precision of at- 
tempted measurement directs the attention; while 



SOCIAL PHILO SOPHY-EDUCATION. 305 

the security of boundaries, within which maximum 
error must be restrained, enables the hand gradu- 
ally to approach the perfectness which instruments 
cannot. Gradually, the mind then becomes con- 
scious of the beauty which, even after this honest 
effort, remains inimitable; and the faculty of dis- 
crimination increases alike through failure and 
success. But Avhen the true contours are voluntar- 
ily and habitually departed from, the essential 
qualities of every beautiful form are necessarily 
lost, and the student remains forever unaware of 
their existence. 

The second error in the existing system is the en- 
forcement of the execution of finished drawings in 
light and shade, before the student has acquired 
delicacy of sight enough to observe the gi-adations. 
It requires the most careful and patient teaching to 
develop this faculty; and it can only be developed 
at all by raind and various practice from natural 
objects, during which the attention of the student 
must be directed only to the facts of the shadows 
themselves, and not at all arrested on methods of 
producing them. He may even be allowed to pro- 
duce them as he likes, or as he can; the thing re- 
quired of him being only that the shade b'e of 
the right darkness, of the right shape, and in the 
right relation to other shades round it; and not at 
all that it shall be prettily cross hatched, or decep- 
tively transparent. But at present, the only virtues 
required in shadow are that it shall be pretty in 
texture and picturesquely effective; and it is not 
thought of the smallest consequence that it should 
be in the right place, or of the right depth. And the 
consequence is that the student remains, when he 
becomes a painter, a mere manufacturer of conven- 
tional shadows of agreeable texture, and to the end 
of his life incapable of perceiving the conditions 
of the simplest natural passage of chiaroscuro. 

The third error in the existing code, and in ulti- 
mately destructive power, the worst, is the con- 
struction of entirely symmetrical or balanced forms 
for exercises in ornamental design; whereas every 



306 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

beautiful form in this world, is varied in the minu- 
tiae of the balanced sides. Place the most beautiful 
of human forms in exact symmetry of position, and 
curl the hair into equal curls on both sides, and it 
will become ridiculous, or monstrous. Nor can any 
law of beauty be nobly observed without occasional 
wilfulness of violation. — Laws of Fisole, pp. 7, 6. 

Perspective. — I never met but with two men 
in my life who knew enough of perspective to draw 
a Grothic arch in a retiring plane, so that its lateral 
dimensions and curvatures ujight be calculated to 
scale from the drawing. — Pre-Raphaelitism, p. 20. 

No great painters ever trouble themselves about 
perspective, and very few of them know its laws; 
they draw everything by the eye, and, naturally 
enough, disdain in the easy parts of their work 
rules which cannot help them in difficult ones. It 
would take about a month's labor to draw im- 
perfectly, by laws of i^erspective, what any great 
Venetian will draw perfectly in five minutes, when 
he is throwing a wreath of leaves round a head, or 
bending the curves of a pattern in and out among 
the folds of drapery. . . . Turner, though he was 
professor of perspective to the Royal Academy, did 
not know what he professed, and never, as far as 1 
remember, drew a single building in true perspec- 
tive in his life; he drew them only with as much 
persjDective as suited him. Prout also knew nothing 
of perspective, and twisted his buildings, as Turner 
did, into whatever shapes he liked. I do not justify 
this; and would recommend the student at least to 
treat perspective with common civility, but to pay 
no court to it. — Elements of Dratoing, p. 12. 

All the professors of perspective in Europe, 
could not, by perspective, draw the live of curve 
of a sea beach; nay, could not outline one pool of 
the quiet water left among the sand. The eye and 
hand can do it, nothing else. All the rules of aerial 
perspective that ever were written, will not tell me 
how sharply the pines on the hill-top are drawn at 
this moment on the sky. I shall know if I see them, 



SOCIAL PHILOSOrilY—EBUCAriON. 30? 

and love them; not till then. — Stones of Venice, III., 
p. 481. 

When perspective was first invented the world 
thought it a mighty discovery, and the greatest 
men it had in it were as proud of knowing that 
retiring lines converge, as if all the wisdom of 
Solomon had been compressed into a vanishing 
point. And, accordingly, it became nearly impos- 
sible for any one to paint a Nativity, but he must 
turn the stable and manger into a Corinthian 
arcade, in order to show his knowledge of perspec- 
tive; and half the best architecture of the time, 
instead of being adorned with historical sculpture, 
as of old, was set forth Avith bas-relief of minor 
corridors and galleries, thrown into perspective. — 
Stones of Venice, p. 60. 

Aerial Perspective. — Aerial perspective, as giv- 
en by the modern artist, is, in nine cases out of ten, 
a gross and ridiculous exaggeration. . . . The other 
day I showed a fine impression of Albert Durer's 
" St. Hubert " to a modern engraver, who had never 
seen it nor any other of Albert Durer's Avorks. He 
looked at it for a minute contemptuously, then 
turned away : " Ah, I see that man did not knoAv 
much about aerial perspective ! " All the glorious 
work and thought of the mighty master, all the re- 
dundant landscape, the living vegetation, the mag- 
nificent truth of line, were dead letters to him. 
because he happened to have been taught one 
particular piece of knowledge which Durer despised. 
— Stones of Venice, III., p. 49. 

You:ng Folks ix Picture Galleries. —It only 
wastes the time and dulls the feelings of young 
persons, to drag them through picti;re galleries; 
at least, unless they themselves wish to look at 
l^articular pictures, (jenerally, young people only 
care to enter a picture gallery when there is a 
chance of getting leave to run a race to the other 
end of it; and they had better do that in the gar- 
den below. If, however, they have any real enjoy- 
ment of pictures, and want to look at this one or 



SOS A BUSKIN ANTBOLOaY. 

that, the principal point is never to disturb them 
in looking at what interests them, and never to 
make them look at what does not. Nothing is of 
the least use to young people (nor, by the way, of 
much use to old ones), but what interests them- and 
therefore, though it is of great importance to put 
nothing but good art into their possession, yet when 
they are passing through great houses or galleries, 
they should be allowed to look precisely at what 
pleases them : if it is not useful to them as art, it 
will be in some other way : and the healthiest way 
in which art can interest them is when they look at 
it, not as art, but because it represents something 
they like in nature. If a boy has had his heart 
filled by the life of some great man, and goes up 
thirstily to a Vandyck portrait of him, to see what 
he was like, that is the wholesomest way in which 
he can begin the study of portraiture; if he love 
mountains, and dwell on a Turner drawing because 
he sees in it a likeness to a Yorkshire scar, or an 
Alpine pass, that is the wholesomest way in which 
he can begin the study of landscape; and if a girl's 
mind is filled with dreams of angels and saints, and 
she pauses before an Angelico because she thinks 
it must surely be indeed like heaven, that is the 
wholesomest way for her to begin the study of re- 
ligious Sivt.— Elements of Drawing , pp. 185, 186. 



SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY— MUSEUMS. 309 



CHAPTER III. 

Museums. 

A iiiiiseum is, be it first observed, primarily, not 
'.c al! a place of entertainment, but a place of 
Sducation. And a museum is, be it secondly, ob- 
served, not a place for elementary education, but 
for that of already far-advanced scholars. And it 
is by no means the same thing as a parish school, 
or a Sunday school, or a day school, or even — the 
Brighton Aquarium. — Fors, III., p. CG. 

In all museums intended for popular teaching, 
there are two great evils to be avoided. The first 
is, suiDerabundance; the second, disorder. The first 
is having too much of everything. You will find in 
your own work that the less you have to look at, the 
better you attend. You can no more see twenty 
things worth seeing in an hour, than you can read 
twenty books worth reading in a day. Give little, 
but that little good and beautiful, and explain it 
tlioroughly. — Deucalion, p. 94. 

Nothing has so much retarded the advance of 
art as our misei'able habit of mixing the works of 
every master and of every century. More would 
be learned by an ordinarily intelligent observer 
in simply passing from a room in which there were 
only Titians, to another in which there were oidy 
Caraccis, than by reading a volume of lectures on 
color. Few minds are strong enough first to ab- 
stract and then to generalize the characters of 
paintings hung at random. Pew minds are so 
dull as not at once to perceive the points of difi'er- 
ence, were the works of each painter set by them- 
selves. The fatigue of which most persons com- 
plain in passing through a picture gallery, as at 
present arranged, is indeed partly caused by the 



310 A liUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

straining elloit to see what is out of sight, but not 
less by the continual change of temper and of tone 
of thought demanded in passing from the work of 
one master to that of another. — Arrows of the Chace, 
L, p. 61. 

A museum, primarily, is to be for simple persons. 
Children, that is to say, and peasants. For your 
student, your antiquary, or your scientific gentle- 
man, there must be separate accommodation, or they 
must be sent elsewhere. . . . Secondly: The museum 
is to manifest to these simi^le persons the beauty 
and life of all things and creatures in their perfect- 
ness. Not their modes of corrujition, disease, or 
death. Not even, always, their genesis, in the more 
or less blundering beginnings of it; not even their 
modes of nourishment, if destructive; you must not 
stuff a blackbird pulling up a worm, nor exhibit 
in a glass case a crocodile crunching a baby. 

Neither must you ever show bones or guts, or any 
other charnel-house stuff. Teach your children to 
know the lark's note from the nightingale's; the 
length of their larynxes is their own business and 
God's. 

It is difficult to get one clear idea into anybody, 
of any single thing. But next to impossible to get 
two clear ideas into them, of the same thing. We 
have had lion's heads for door-knockers these hun- 
dred and fifty years, without ever learning so much 
as what a lion's head is like. But with good mod- 
ern stuffing and sketching, I can manage now to 
make a child really understand something about 
the beast's look, and his mane, and his sullen eyes 
and brindled lips. But if I'm bothered at the same 
time with a big bony box, that has neither mane, 
lips, nor eyes, and have to explain to the poor 
wretch of a parish schoolboy how somehow this 
fits on to that, I will be bound that, at a year's 
end, draw one as big as the other, and he won't 
know a lion's head from a tiger's — nor a lion's 
skull from a rabbit's. Nor is it the parish boy 
only who suffers. The scientific people themselves 



SOCIAL FHILOSOPHY-MUSEUMS. 311 

miss half tlieir points from the haldt of hacking at 
things, instead of looking at them. When I gave 
my lecture on the Swallow at Oxford, I challenged 
every anatomist there to tell me the use of his tail 
(I believe half of them didn't know he had one). 
Not a soul of them could tell me, which I knew 
beforehand; but I did not know, till I had looked 
well through their books, hoAV they were quarrel- 
ling about his wings ! Actually, at this moment 
(Easter Tuesday, 1880), I don't believe you can find 
in any scientific book in Europe, a true account 
of the Avay a bird flies— or how a snake serpentines. 
My Swallow lecture was the first bit of clear state- 
ment on the one point, and when I get my Snake 
lecture published, you will have the first extant bit 
of clear statement on the other; and that is simply 
because the anatomists can't, for their life, look at 
a thing till they have skinned it. 

In the British Museum, at the top of the stairs, 
we encounter in a terrific alliance a giraffe, a hip- 
popotamus, and a basking-shark. The public- 
young and old— pass with a start and a stare, and re- 
main as wise as they were before about all the three 
creatures. The day before yesterday I was standing 
by the big fish,— a father came up to it with his 
little boy. "That's a shark," says he; " it turns 
on its side when it wants to eat you," and so went 
on— literally as wise as he was before; for he had 
read in a book that sharks turn on their side to 
bite, and he never looked at the ticket, which 
told him this particular shark only ate small fish. 
Now he never looked at the ticket because he didn't 
expect to find anything on it except that this was 
the Sharkogobalus Smith-Jonesianius. But if, 
round tlie walls of the room, there had been all the 
well-known kinds of shcU-k, going down in gradu- 
ated sizes, from that basking one to our waggling 
dog-fish, and if every one of these had had a plain 
English ticket, with ten words of common sense on 
it, saying where and how the beast lived, and a num- 
ber (unchangeable) referring to a properly arranged 
manual of the shark tribe (sold by the Museum 



312, A EUSKIN ANTHOLOGY: 

publisher, who ought to have his httle shop close 
by the porter's lodge), both father and son must 
have been much below the level of the average Eng- 
lishman and boy in mother wit if they did not go out 
of the room by the door in front of them very dis- 
tinctly, and— to themselves — amazingly wiser than 
they had come in by the door behind them. 

If I venture to give instances of fault from the 
British Museum, it is because, on the whole, it is 
the best ordered and pleasantest institution in all 
England, and the grandest concentration of the 
means of human knowledge in the world. 

Every considerable town ought to have its ex- 
emplary collections of woodM^ork, ironwork, and 
iewellery attached to the schools of their several 
trades, leaving to be illustrated in its pu olic mu- 
seum, as in an hexagonal bee's ceil, the six queenly 
and muse-taught arts of needlework, writing, pot- 
tery, sculpture, architecture, and painting. 

For each of these, there should be a separate 
Tribune or Chamber of absolute tribunal, which 
need not be large — that, so called, of Florence, not 
the size of a railway waiting-room, has actually for 
the last century determined the taste of the Euro- 
pean public in two arts ! — in which the absolute best 
in each art, so far as attainable by the communal 
pocket, shall be authoritatively exhibited, Avith sim- 
ple statement that it 4s good, and reason why it is 
good, and notification in Avhat particulars it is un- 
surpassable, together with some not too complex 
illustrations of the steps by which it has attained to 
that perfection, where these can be traced far ba,ck 
in history. 

These six Tribunes, or Temples of Fame, being 
first set, with their fixed criteria, there should fol- 
low a series of historical galleries, showing the rise 
and fall (if fallen') of the arts in their beautiful 
associations as practiced in the great cities and by 
the great nations of the world. The history of 
Egypt, of Persia, of Greece, of Italy, of France, and 
of England, should be given in their arts: dynasty 
by dynasty, age by age; and for tbft seventh, a 



SOCIAL PIIILOSOPtlY— MUSEUMS. 313 

Sunday Room, for the histovy of Christiaiiity in its 
Art, including; the farthest range and feeblest efforts 
of it; reserving' for tliis room also, what power 
could be reached in delineation of the great mon- 
asteries and cathedrals which were once the glory 
of all Christian lands. — London Art Journal, June 
and Aug., 1880. 

[At his examination before the National Gallery 
Commission, in 1857, Mr. Ruskin said * that the 
Tribune at Florence was poorly arranged, the 
paintings and sculptures huddled together merely 
to show how many great and rich works could be 
got together in one place. But paintings and 
sculptures should be exhibited separately. He gave 
it as his opinion that all kinds of pictures ought to 
be shown under glass, if possible; it gives them a 
greater delicacy, and keeps them from being ruined 
by coal smoke and dust. Again, paintings should 
be hung on a line with the eye, and not so as to 
cover the wtills of a room four or five deep. He 
would not accumulate in the gallery avast number 
of pictures, but a few of the characteristic ones of 
the greatest artists. Indeed, there should be two 
public galleries, one removed at a distance from 
London, and another, easily accessible to the people, 
designed for their education, and containing not the 
best and most precious works, but works true and 
right so far as they went. On some one enquiring 
his opinion of the value of second-rate art, he is re- 
ported to have said that fiftli-rate, sixth-rate to a 
hundredth-rate art is good. Art that gives jjleasure 
to any one has a right to exist. A child's picture 
book pleases the baby; a flower beautifully drawn 
will delight a girl who is learning botany, and may 
be useful to some man of science. The true outline 
of a leaf shown to a child may turn the whole 
course of its life.fl 

* See The Lomlon Literary Gazette, Aug. 22, 1857. 
t For further Ideiis of Ruskin on public Galleries of Art, see 
Arn/ws of the Chace, I., pp. 47 (55 iind 101-107. 



314 A liUSKlN ANTHOLOar. 

CHAPTER IV. 

St. George's Guild.* 

To THE Workmen and Laborers op Great 
Britain. — Are there any landlords — any masters — 
who would like better to be served by men than by 
iron devils ? Any tenants, any workmen, who can 
be true to their leaders and to each other ? who 
can vow to work and to live faithfully, for the sake 
of the joy of their homes ? — Will any such give the 
tenth of what they have, and of what they earn — 
not to emigrate with, but to stay in England with; 
and do what is in their hands and hearts to make 
her a happy England ? I am not rich; (as people 
now estimate riches), and great part of what I have 
is already engaged in maintaining art-workmen, 
or for other objects more or less of public utility. 
The tenth of whatever is left to me, estimated as 
accurately as I can, (you shall see the accounts,) I 
will make over to you in perpetuity, with the best 
security that English law can give, on Christmas 
Day of this year, with engagement to add the 
tithe of whatever I earn afterwards. Who else will 
help, with little or much? the object of such fund 
being, to begin, and gradually — no matter how 
slowly — to increase, the buying and securing of 

[* St. George's Guild wasfonnully organized in 1871, and duly 
registered as a limited liabilities company. Ruskin at that 
time made over to it tlie tenth of his Income, he being worth 
about $5.50,000. Up to July, 1876, the membership numbered only 
about thirty persons, many of tliem young ladies. It curiously 
marks the unpopular nature of the enterprise, that the mastei', 
in drawing up for publication his list of names of members 
dared to give, at first, only the initials, and afterwards the first 
and last names of sncli as he thought would not blame him for 
so doing. Up to July, 1877, the Guild had funds in cash to the 
amount of £3,487 128. Branch societies have been formed in 
Manchester, Glasgow, and Aberdeen. But Furs Clavigera, the 
oflicial joui-nal of the Guild, is no more issued, and the whole 
concern is reported to be moribund, if not dead. See the Intro- 
duction for further details.' 



SOCIAL PIIILOSOPHYST. OEORQ&S GUILD. 313 

land in England, which shall not be built upon, 
but cultivated by Englishmen, with their own 
hands, and such help of force as they can find in 
wind and wave. 

I do not care with how many, or how few, this 
thing is begun, nor on what inconsiderable scale— 
if it be but in two or three poor men's gardens. 
So much, at least. I can buy, myself and give them. 
If no help come, I have done and said what I could, 
and there will be an end. If any help come to me, 
it is to be on the following conditions :— We will 
try to make some small piece of English ground, 
beautiful, peaceful, and fruitful. We will have no 
steam-engines upon it, and no railroads; we will 
have no untended or unthought-of creatures on it; 
none wretched, but the sick; none idle, but the 
dead. We will have no liberty upon it; but instant 
obedience to known law, and appointed persons; 
no equality upon it; but recognition of every bet- 
terness that we can find, and reprobation of every 
worseness. When we want to go anywhere, we 
will go there quietly and safely, not at forty miles 
an hour in the risk of our lives; when we want to 
carry anything anywhere, we will carry it either 
on the backs of beasts, or on our own, or in carts, 
or boats ; we will have plenty of flowers and vege- 
tables in our gardens, plenty of corn and grass in 
our fields,— and few bricks. We will have some 
music and poetry; the children shall learn to dance 
to it and sing it;— perhaps some of the old people, 
in time, may also. We will have some art, more- 
over; we will at least try if, like the Greeks, we 
can't make some pots. The Greeks used to paint 
pictures of gods on their pots; Ave, probably, can- 
not do as much, but we may put some pictures of 
insects on them, and reptiles;— butterflies, and 
frogs, if nothing better. There was an excellent 
old potter in France who used to i^ut frogs and 
vipers into his dishes, to the admiration of man- 
kind; we can surely put something nicer than that. 
Little by little, some higher art and imagination 
may manifest themselves among us; and feeble rays 



816 A RVSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

oi science may dawn for us. Botany, though too 
dull to dispute the existence of flowers; and history, 
though too sinii^le to question the nativity of men; 
— nay — even perhaps an unealculating and uncov- 
etous wisdom, as of rude Magi, presenting, at such 
nativity, gifts of gold and frankincense. — Fors, I., 
p. 73. 

Not an Experiment. — The very gist and essence 
of everything St. George orders is that it shall not 
be new, and not an "experiment"; but the re- 
declaration and re-doing of things known and 
practised successfully since Adam's time. ... Is 
the earth new, and its bread ? Are the plow and 
sickle new in men's hands ? Are Faith and God- 
liness new in their hearts ? Are common human 
charity and courage new ? By God's grace, lasting 
yet, one sees in miners' hearts and sailors'. Your po- 
litical cowardice is new, and your public rascality, 
and your blasphemy, and your equality, and your 
science of Dirt. New in their insolence and ram- 
pant infinitude of egotism — not new in one idea, or 
in one possibility of good. — Fors, IV., p. 45. 

An Ounce of Prevention.— To divei-t a little of 
the large current of English charity and justice 
from watching disease to guarding health, and from 
the punishment of crime to the reward of virtue; to 
establish, here and there, exercise grounds instead 
of hospitals, and training schools instead of peni- 
tiaries, is not, if you will slowly take it to heart, a 
frantic imagination. — Fors, I., p. 132. 

Contributions to the Fund op St. George.— 
First, let whoever gives us any, be clear in their 
minds that it is a Gift. It is not an Investment. It 
is a frank and simple gift to the British peojile; 
nothing of it is to come back to the giver. But also, 
nothing of it is to be lost. This money is not to be 
spent in feeding Woolwich infants with gunpowder. 
It is to be spent in dressing the earth and keeping 
it— in feeding human lips— in clothing human bod- 
ies — in kindling human souls. 

First of all, I say, in dressing tlie earth. As soon 



SOCIAL rUILOSOPHY—ST. GEORGE'S GflLB. 317 

as the fund reaches any sufficient amount, the 
Trustees shall buy with it any kind of land offered 
them at just pi-ice in Britain. Rock, moor, marsh, 
or sea-shore — it matters not what, so it be British 
ground, and secured to us. 

Then, we will ascertain the absolute best that can 
be made of every acre. We will first examine what 
flowers and herbs it naturally bears; every whole- 
some floAver that it will grow shall be sown in its 
wild places, and every kind of fruit tree that can 
prosper ; and arable and pasture land extended by 
every expedient of tillage, with humble and simple 
cottage dwellings under faultless sanitary regula- 
tion. AVhatever piece of land we begin work upon, 
we shall treat thoroughly at once, putting unlimited 
manual labor on it, until we have every foot of it 
under as strict care as a flower garden : and the 
laborers shall be paid sufficient, unchanging wages; 
and their children educated compulsorily in agri- 
cultural schools inland, and naval schools by the 
sea; the indispensable first condition of such 
education being that boys learn either to ride or 
to sail; the girls to spin, weave, and sew, and at a 
proper age to cook all ordinary food exquisitely; 
the youths of both sexes to be disciplined daily in 
the strictest ijractice of vocal music; and for moral- 
ity, to be taught gentleness to all brute creatures — 
finished courtesy to each other — to speak truth with 
rigid care— and to obey orders with the precision of 
slaves. Then, as they get older, they are to learn 
the natural history of the place they live in — to 
know Latin, boys and gii'ls both — and the history 
of five cities: Athens, Rome, Venice, Florence, and 
Juoudon.—Fors, I., pp. 109, 110. 

The Company of Mont Rose.— Within my St. 
George's Company, — which shall be of persons still 
following their own business, wherever they are, 
but who will give the tenth of what they have, or 
make, for the purchase of land in England, to be 
cultivated by hand, as aforesaid in my last May 
number,— shall be another company, not distinc- 



318 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

tive, called of " Monte Rosa," or " Mont Rose," be- 
cause Monte Rosa is the central mountain of the 
range between north and south Europe, which 
keeps the gift of the rain of heaven. And the motto 
or watchword of this company is to be the old 
French " Mont-joie." And they are to be entirely 
devoted, according to their power, first to the man- 
ual labor of cultivating pure land, and guiding 
of pure streams and rain to the places where they 
are needed; and secondly, together with this manual 
labor, and much by its means, they are to carry on 
the thoughtful labor of true education, in them- 
selves and of othei's. And they are not to be monks 
nor nuns; but are to learn, and teach all fair 
arts, and sweet order and obedience of life; and to 
educate the children entrusted to their schools in 
such practical arts and patient obedience; but not 
at all, necessai'ily, in either arithmetic, writing, or 
reading. — Fors, I., p. 229. 

Creed of St. George's Guild.— I. I trust in the 
Living God, Father Almighty, Maker of heaven 
and earth, and of all things and creatures visible 
and invisible. 

I trust in the kindness of His law, and the good- 
ness of His work. 

And I Avill strive to love Him, and keep His law, 
and see His work, while I live. 

II. I trust in the nobleness of human nature, in 
the majesty of its faculties, the fulness of its mercy, 
and the joy of its love. 

And I will strive to love my neighbor as myself, 
and, even when I cannot, will act as if I did. 

III. I will labor, with such strength and oppor- 
tunity as God gives me, for my own daily bread; 
and all that my hand finds to do, I will do with my 
might. 

IV. I will not deceive, or cause to be deceived, 
any human being for my gain or pleasure; nor 
hurt, or cause to be hurt, any human being for my 
gain or pleasure; nor rob, or cause to be robbed, 
any human being for my gain or pleasure. 

V. 1 will not kill nor hurt any living creature 



SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY— ST. GEORGE'S GUILD. Zl% 

needlessly, nor destroy any beautiful thing, but Avill 
strive to save and comfort all gentle life, and guard 
and perfect all natural beauty, upon the earth. 

VI. I will strive to raise my own body and soul 
daily into higher powers of duty and happiness; 
not in rivalship or contention with others, but for 
the help, delight, and honor of others, and for the 
joy and peace of my own life. 

VII. I will obey all the laws of my country faith- 
fully; and the orders of its monarch, and of all 
persons appointed to be in authority under its 
monarch, so far as such laws or commands are 
consistent with what I suppose to be the law of 
God; and when they are not, or seem in anywise to 
need change, I will oppose them loyally and delib- 
erately, not with malicious, concealed, or disorderly 
violence. 

VIII. And with the same faithfulness, and under 
the limits of the same obedience which I render to 
the laws of my country, and the commands of its 
rulers, I w^ill obey the laws of the Society called of St. 
George, into which I am this day received; and the 
orders of its masters, and of all persons appointed 
to be in authority under its masters, so long as I 
remain a Companion, called of St. George. — Foi's, 
III., p. 40. 



IN RUSKIN'S UTOPIA. 

It would be part of my scheme of physical educa- 
tion that every youth in the State — from the King's 
son downwards — should learn to do something 
finely and thoroughly with his hand, so as to let 
him know what touch meant; and Avliat stout craft- 
manship meant; and to inform him of many things 
besides, which no man can learn but by some se- 
verely accurate discipline in doing. — Time and Tide, 
p. 91. 

In the case of great old families, which always 
ought to be, and in some measure, however deca- 
dent, still triily are, the noblest monuniental archi- 



320 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

tecture of the kingdom, living temples of sacred 
tradition and hero's religion, so much land ought 
to be granted to them in perpetuity as may enable 
them to live thereon with all circumstances of state 
and outward nobleness,— J'^ we and Tide, p. 100. 

All our actual and professed soldiers, whether 
professed for a time only, or for life, must be kept 
to hard work of hand, when not in actual war; 
their honor consisting in being sent to services of 
more pain and danger than others : to lifeboat ser- 
vice; to redeeming of ground from furious rivers 
or sea — or mountain ruin; to subduing wild and 
unhealthy land, and extending the confines of col- 
onies in the front of miasm and famine, and savage 
races. — Time and Tide, p. 119. 

Music. — In their first learning of notes, the young 
people shall be taught the great purpose of music, 
which is to say a thing that you mean deeply, in 
the strongest and clearest possible way; and they 
shall never be taught to sing what they don't mean. 
They shall be able to sing merrily when they are 
happy, and earnestly when they are sad; but they 
shall find no mirth in mockery, nor in obscenity; 
neither shall they waste and jjrofane their hearts 
with artificial and lascivious sorrow: Regulations 
which will bring about some curious changes in 
piano-playing, and several other things. — Fo7's, I., 
p. 123. 

Sumptuary Laws- — One of the most important 
conditions of a healthful system of social economy 
would be the restraint of the properties and in- 
comes of the upper classes within certain fixed 
limits. The temptation to use every energy in the 
accumulation of wealth being thus removed, an- 
other, and a higher ideal of the duties of advanced 
life would be necessarily created in the national 
mind; by withdrawal of those who had attained 
the i^rescribed limits of wealth from commercial com- 
petition, earlier worldly success, and earlier mar- 
riage, with all its beneficent moral results, would 
become possible to the young; while tlie older men 
of active intellect, whose sagacity is now lost or 



SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY— ST. GEORGE'S GUILD. 321 

warped in the furtherance of tlieir own meanest 
interests, would he induced unselfishly to occupy 
themselves in the superintendence of public insti- 
tutions, or furtherance of public advantage. — Time 
and Tide, p. 15. 

The Propessiojvs in Utopia.— So far from want- 
ing any lawyers, of the kind that live by talking, 
I shall have the strongest possible objection to 
their appearance in the country. For doctors, I 
shall always entertain a profound respect; but 
when I get my athletic education established, of 
what help to them will my respect be ? They will 
all starve! And for clergymen, it is true, I shall 
have a large number of episcopates — one over every 
hundred families— (and many positions of civil au- 
thority also, for civil officers, above them and 
below), but all these places will involve much hard 
work, and be anything but covetable; while, of 
clergymen's usual work — admonition, theological 
demonstration, and the like — I shall want very little 
done indeed, and that little done for nothing! for 
I will allow no man to admonish anybody, until 
he has jjreviously earned his own dinner by more 
prodvictive work than admonition. — Time and Tide, 
p. 73. 

Co-operative Trade Guilds.— I use the word 
co-oi3eration, as opposed, not to masterhood, but 
to competition. I do not mean, for instance, by co- 
operation, that all the master-bakers in a town are 
to give a share of their i^roflts to the men who go 
out with the bread; but that the masters are not to 
try to undersell each other, nor seek each to get 
the other's business, but are all to form one society, 
selling to the public under a common law of severe 
penalty for unjust dealing, and at an established 
price. 1 do not mean that all bankers' clei'ks 
should be partners in the bank; but I do mean 
that all bankers should be members of a great 
national body, answerable as a society for all de- 
Ijosits; and that the private business of speculating 
with other people's money should take another 
name than that of " banking." And, for final in- 



322 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

stance, I mean by " co-operation " not only fellow- 
ships between trading firms, but between trading 
nations; so that it shall no more be thought (as it 
is now, with ludicrous and vain selfishness) an ad- 
vantage for one nation to undersell another, and 
take its occupation away from it; but that the 
primal and eternal law of vital commerce shall be 
of all men understood — namely, that every nation 
is fitted by its character, and the natvire of its terri- 
tories, for some particular employments or manu- 
factures; and that it is the true interest of every 
other nation to encourage it in such specialty, and 
by no means to interfere with, but in all ways for- 
ward and protect its efforts, ceasing all rivalship 
with it, so soon as it is strong enough to occupy its 
proper place. — Time mid Tide, p. 11. 

The chief difficulty in the matter would be to fix 
your standard. This would have to be done by the 
guild of every trade in its own manner, and within 
certain easily recognizable limits; and this fixing 
of standard would necessitate much simplicity in 
the forms and kinds of articles sold. You could 
only warrant a certain kind of glazing or painting 
in china, a certain quality of leather or cloth, 
bricks of a certain clay, loaves of a defined mixture 
of meal. Advisable improvements or varieties in 
manufacture would have to be examined and ac- 
cepted by the trade guild : when so accepted, they 
would be announced in public reports; and all 
puffery and self-proclamation, on the part of trades- 
men, absolutely forbidden, as much as the making 
of any other kind of noise or disturbance. 

But observe, this law is only to have force over 
tradesmen whom I suppose to have joined volun- 
tarily in carrying out a better system of commerce. 
Outside of their guild, they would have to leave 
the rogue to puff and cheat as he chose, and the 
public to be gulled as they chose. All that is neces- 
sary is that the said public should clearly know 
the shops in which they could get warranted arti- 
cles; and, as clearly, those in which they bought 
at their own risk.— Tiwe and Tide, pp. 57-59. 



PART III. 

CONDUCT OF LIFE. 



A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 



PART III.— CONDUCT OF LIFE. 



CHAPTER 1. 

Morals. 

Every great evil brings some good in its back- 
ward eddies. — Lectures on Art, p. 43. 

Youth never yet lost its modesty where age had 
not lost its honor; nor did childhood ever refuse 
its reverence, except wdiere age had forgotten correc- 
tion. — Lectures on Architecture, p. 139. 

Believe me, every virtue of the higher phases of 
manly character begins in this; — in truth and 
modesty before the face of all maidens; in truth 
and pity, or truth and reverence, to all womanhood. 
Croum of Wild Olive, Lect. III., p. 91. 

He only is advancing in life, whose heart is getting 
softer, whose blood Avarmer, whose brain quicker, 
whose spirit is entering into living peace. — Sesame 
and Lilies, p. 67. 

Virtue ceases to be such, if expecting reward: it is 
therefore never materially rewarded. (I ought to 
have said, except as one of the appointed means of 
physical and mental health.)— ^07*5, III., p. 330. 

Many of our capacities for receiving noblest emo- 
tion are abused, in mere idleness, for pleasure's 
sake, and jjeople take the excitement of a solemn 
sensation, as they do that of a strong drink. — Mod- 
ern Painters, IV., p. 49. 

If you have faithfully loved the noble work of 
others, you need not fear to speak with respect of 
tilings duly done, of your own. — Athena, p. 104. 

329 



330 A EUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

Let the reader be assured of this, that unless 
important changes are occurring in his opinions 
continually, all his life long, not one of those opin- 
ions can be on any questionable subject true. All 
true opinions are living, and show their life by being 
capable of nourishment; therefore of change. But 
their change is that of a tree — not of a cloud. — Mod- 
ern Painters, V., p. 13. 

Ill-got money is always finally spent on the harlot. 
Look at Hogarth's two 'prentices; the sum of social 
wisdom is in that bit of rude art- work, if one reads 
it solemnly. — Arrot>os of the Chaee, p. 134. 

The automatic amours and involuntary proposals 
of recent romance acknowledge little further law of 
morality than the instinct of an insect or the effer- 
vescence of a chemical mixture. — Fiction — Fair and 
Foul, p. 17. 

Self-saci*ifice which is sought after and triumiAed 
in, is usually foolish; and calamitous in its issue: 
and by the sentimental proclamation and pursuit 
of it, good people have not only made most of their 
own lives useless, but the whole framework of their 
religion hollow. — Ethics of the Dust, p. 79. 

Poetical Justice ix Miss Edgeworth's Books. 
— It is very nice, in the midst of a wild world, to 
have the very ideal of poetical justice done always 
to one's hand:— to have everybody found out, who 
tells lies; and everybody decorated with a red riband 
who doesn't; and to see the good Laura, who gave 
away her half sovereign, receiving a grand ovation 
from an entire dinner party disturbed for the pur- 
pose; and poor, dear, little Rosamond, who chooses 
purple jars instead of new shoes, left at last without 
either her shoes or her bottle. But it isn't life: and 
in the way children might easily understand it, 
it isn't morals. — Ethics of the Dust, p. 89. 

Dependence, and not Independpjnce, the Law 
OP Life. — The true strength of every human soul is 
to be dependent on as many nobler as it can discern, 
and to be depended upon by as many inferior as it 
can reach. — Eagle's Nest, p. 54. 



CONDUCT OF LIFE— MORALS. 331 

Independence you had better cease to talk of, for 
you are dependent not only on every act of people 
whom you never heard of, who are living around 
you, but on every past act of what has been dust for 
a thousand years. So also, does the course of a 
thousand years to come depend upon the little per- 
ishing strength that is in you.— Fors, I., p. 3o. 

Capital Pujjishment. — It is only rogues who 
have a violent objection to being hanged, and only 
abettors of rogues who would desire anything else 
for them. Honest men don't in the least mind being 
hanged occasionally by mistake, so only that the 
general principle of the gallows be Justly main- 
tained; and they have the jjleasure of knowing that 
the world they leave is positively minded to cleanse 
Itself of the human vermin with which they have 
been classed by mistake. The contrary move- 
ment — so vigorously progressive in modern days — 
has its real root in a gradually increasing convic- 
tion on the i^art of the English nation that they are 
all vermin. (" Worms " is the orthodox Evangeli- 
cal expression.) — Fors, II., p. 100. 

I believe it to be quite one of the crowning wick- 
ednesses of this age that we have starved and chilled 
our faculty of indignation, and neither desire nor 
dare to punish crimes justly. — Lectures on Art, j). 60. 

Your modern conscience will not incur the respon- 
sibility of shortening the hourly moi-e guilty life of 
a single rogue; but will contentedly fire a salvo of 
mitrailleuses into a regiment of honest men — leaving 
Providence to guide the shot. — Fors, II., p. 211. 

Three Forms of Asceticism. — Three principal 
forms of asceticism have existed in this weak world. 
Religious asceticisn), being the refusal of pleasure 
and knowledge for the sake (as supposed) of religion ; 
seen chiefly in the middle ages. Military asceticisni, 
being the refusal of pleasure and knowledge for the 
sake of power; seen chiefly in the early days of 
Sparta and Rome. And monetary asceticism, con- 
sisting in the refusal of pleasure and knowledge for 



332 A liUSKII^ ANTHOLOGY. 

the sake of money; seen in the ])vesent days of Lon- 
don and Manchester. — Modern Painters, V., p. 850. 

The noble Tower needs no Help, — Your noble 
tower must need no help, must be sustained by 
no crutches, must give place to no suspicion of 
decrepitude. Its office may be to withstand war, 
look forth for tidings, or to point to heaven: but 
it must have in its own walls the strength to do 
this; it is to be itself a bulwark not to be sustained 
by other bulwarks; to rise and look forth, "the 
tower of Lebanon that looketh toward Damascus,'* 
like a stern sentinel, not like a child held up in its 
nurse's arms. — Stones of Venice, I., p. 20G. 

Looking Facts full in the Face.— As the igno- 
ble person, in his dealings with all that occurs in 
the world about him, first sees nothing clearly, — 
looks nothing fairly in the face, and then allows 
himself to be swept away by the trampling torrent, 
and unescapable force, of the things that he would 
not foresee, and could not understand: so the noble 
person, looking the facts of the world full in the 
face, and fathoming them Avith deep faculty, then 
deals with them in unalarmed intelligence and 
unhurried strength, and becomes, with his human 
intellect and will, no unconscious nor insignificant 
agent, in consummating their good, and restraining 
their evil— The Two Paths, p. 32. 

The Mystery op Life.— "What is your life? It 
is even as a vapor that appeareth for a little time, 
and then vanisheth away.' I suppose few people 
reach the middle or latter period of their age, with- 
out having, at some moment of change or disap- 
pointment, felt the truth of those bitter words; and 
been startled by the fading of the sunshine from the 
cloud of their life, into the svidden agony of the 
knowledge that the fabric of it was as fragile as a 
dream, and the endurance of it as transient as the 
dew. But it is not always that, even at such times 
of melancholy surprise, we can enter into any true 
perception that this human life shares, in the nature 
of it, not only the evanescence, but the mystery of 



CONDUCT OF LIFE— MORALS. 333 

the cloud; that its avenues are wreathed in dark- 
ness, and its forms and courses no less fantastic, 
than spectral smAohBunYe.— Mystery of Life, p. 103. 

Meliorism.— Though faint with sickness, and 
encumbered in ruin, the true workers redeem inch 
by inch the wilderness into garden ground; by the 
help of their joined hands the order of all things is 
surely sustained and vitally expanded, and although 
Avith strange vacillation, in the eyes of the watcher, 
the morning conieth, and also the night, there is 
no hour of human existence that does not draw on 
towards the perfect A&y .—Lectures on Art, p. 64. 

The Strength of Greece was in Moral Life.— 
Scarcely any of the moral power of Greece depended 
on her admiration of beauty, or strength in the 
body. The power of Greece depended on practice 
in military exercise, involving severe and continual 
ascetic discipline of the senses; on a perfect code of 
military heroism and patriotic honor; on the desire 
to live by the laws of an admittedly divine justice; 
and on the vivid conception of the presence of spir- 
itual heiugs.—Eagle\s Nest, •^. 130. 

People who are ashamed of honest Work.— 
People usually reason in some such fashion as this: 
" I don't seem quite fit for a head-manager in the 

firm of & Co., therefore, in all probability, I 

am fit to be Chancellor of the Exchequer." Whereas 
they ought rather to reason thus: " I don't seem 
to be quite fit to be head-manager in the firm of 
& Co., but I daresay J might do some- 
thing in a small green-grocery business ; I used to be 
a good judge of peas;' that is to say, always trying 
lower instead of trying higher, until they find bot- 
tom: once well set on the ground, a man may build 
up by degrees, safely, instead of disturbing every 
one in his neighborhood by perpetual catastrophes. 
Pre-Raphaelitism, p. 8. 

There are a few, a very few persons born in each 
generation, whose words are worth hearing; whose 
art is worth seeing. These born few will preach, or 



334 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

sing, or paint, in spite of you; they Avill starve like 
grasshoppers, ratlier than stop singing ; and even 
if you don't choose to listen, it is charitable to 
throw them some crumbs to keep them alive. But 
the people who take to writing or painting as a 
means of livelihood, because they think it genteel, 
ai-e just by so much more contemjitible than com- 
mon beggars, in that they are noisy and offensive 
beggars. I am quite willing to pay for keeping our 
poor vagabonds in the workhouse; but not to pay 
them for grinding organs outside my door, defacing 
the streets with bills and caricatures, tempting 
young girls to read rubbishy novels, or deceiving 
the whole nation to its ruin, in a thousand leagues 
square of dirtily printed falsehood, every morning 
at breakfast. Whatever in literature, art, or relig- 
ion, is done for money, is poisonous itself ; and 
doubly deadly, in preventing the hearing or seeing 
of the noble literature and art which have been done 
for love and truth. — Fors, III., p. 241. 

Profanity ix rare Cases Justifiable.— In Mr. 
Kinglake's " History of the Crimean War," you will 
find the — th Regiment at Alma is stated to have 
been materially assisted in maintaining a position 
quite vital to the battle l)y the steady imjirecation 
delivered at it by its colonel for half-an-hour on 
end. No quantity of benediction Avould have 
answered the purpose; the colonel might have said, 
" Bless you, my children," in the tenderest tones, 
as often as he pleased, — yet not have helped his men 
to keep their ground. — Fors, I., p. 264. 

Dislike of Live Truths.— We are all of us will- 
ing enough to accept dead truths or blunt ones; 
which can be fitted harmlessly into spare niches, or 
shrouded and coiflned at once out of the way, we 
holding complacently the cemetery keys, and sup- 
posing we have learned something. , But a sajjling 
truth, with earth at its root and blossom on its 
branches; or a trenchant truth, that can cut its way 
through liars and sods; most men, it seems to me, 
dislike the sight or entertainment of, if by any 



CONDUCT OF LIFE— MORALS. 335 

means such guest or vision maybe avoided. And, 
indeed, this is no wonder; for one such truth, thor- 
oughly accepted, connects itself strangely with 
others, and there is no saying what it may lead us 
to.— The Two Paths, Preface, p. 3. 

Lawykry.— In the trial of Kit in "Pickwick" 
you have deliberate, artistic, energetic, dishonesty; 
skilfuUest and resolutest endeavor to prove a crime 
against f^n innocent person,— a crime of which, in 
the case of the boy, the reputed commission will 
cost him at least the prosperity and honor of his 
life— nic^e to him than life itself. And this you for- 
give, or udmire, because it is not done in malice, 
but for money, and in pride of art. Because the 
assasslr is paid,— makes his living in that line of 
busincg",— and delivers his thrust with a bravo's 
artistic i«nesse, you think hiu) a respectable person; 
so nwA\ better in style than a passionate one who 
does his murder gratis, vulgarly, with a club,— Bill 
Sykes for instance ? It is all balanced fairly, as the 
systex'1 goes, you think. " It works round, and two 
and two make four. He accused an innocent person 
to-day:— to-morrow he Avill defend a rascal."— For.?, 
p. 291. 

Ar-'tiRATiox, Hope, and Love.— There are three 
Mat'*»vial things, not only useful but essential to 
L-Af'^. No one " knows how to live" till he has got 
thf^m. These are. Pure Air, Water, and Earth. 
Tl'^ere are three Immaterial things, not only useful 
bivt essential to Life. No one knows how to live 
tiil he has got them also. These are, Admiration, 
Hope, and Love.— -For.?, I., p. 67. 

"fHE UNDONES and not THE DONES.— Young 

p*^ple will find it well, throughout life, never to 
t-"uble themselves about what they ought not to 
d", but about what they ouglit to do. The condem- 
nation given from the judgment throne— most sol- 
eijujily described— is all for the unclones and not for 
tlu) dones. People are perpetually afraid of doing 
Avrong; but unless they are doi;ig its reverse energet- 
ics ly, they do it all day long, and the degree does 



336 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

not matter. The commandments are necessarily 
negative, because a new set of j^ositive ones would 
be needed for every person: Avhile the negatives 
are constant. 

But Christ sums them all into two rigorous 
positions, and the first position for young people is 
active and attentive kindness to animals, suppos- 
ing themselves set by God to feed Ilis real sheep 
and ravens before the time comes for doing either 
figuratively. There is scarcely any conception left 
of the character which animals and birds might 
have if kindly treated in a wild state. — Arrows of 
the Chase, II., p. 131. 

You will find it less easy to uproot faults, than to 
choke thenj by gaining virtues. Do not think of 
your faults; still less of othex-s' faults: in every per- 
son who comes near you, look for what is good and 
strong: honor that; rejoice in it; and, as you can, 
try to imitate it: and your faults will drop off, like 
dead leaves, when their time comes. If, on looking 
back, your whole life should seem rugged as a palm- 
tree stem; still, never mind, so long as it has been 
growing; and has its grand green shade of leaves, 
and weight of honied fruit, at top. And even if 
you cannot find much good in yourself at last, 
think that it does not much matter to the ui^iverse 
either what you were, or are; think how many peo- 
ple are noble, if you ca.nnot be; and rejoice in tJieir 
nobleness.— Mhics of the Dust, p. 67. 

Reverenck. — A man's happiness consists in- 
finitely more in admiration of the faculties of others 
than in confidence in his own. That reverent ad- 
miration is the perfect human gift in him; all lower 
animals are happy and noble in the degree they can 
share it. A dog reverences you, a fly does not; the 
capacity of i^artly understanding a creature above 
him, is the dog's nobility. — Fors, I., p. 117. 

Idleness.— There are no chagrins so venomous as 
the chagrins of the idle; there are no pangs so sick- 
ening as the satieties of pleasure: Nay, the bitterest 
and most enduring sorrow may be borne through 



CONDUCT OF LIFE— MORALS. 337 

the burden and heat of day bi'avely to the due tiiue 
of death, by a true worker.— i^ors, IV., p. 359. 

When men are rightly occupied, their amusement 
grows out of tlieir work, as the color-jjetals out of 
a fruitful floAver;—wIien tliey are faithfully helpful 
and compassionate, all their emotions become 
steady, deep, perpetual, and vivifying to the soul 
as the natural i)ulse to the body. — Sesame and 
Lilies, p. 6.5. 

All the vital functions, — and, like the rest and 
with the rest, the pure and wholesome faculties of 
the brain,— rise and set with the sun : your diges- 
tion and intellect arealike dependent on its beams. 
—Eagles Nest, p. 71. 

Idleness, — this is chief cause, now and always, of 
evil everywhere; and I see it at this moment, in its 
deadliest form, out of the window of my quiet Eng- 
lish inn. It is the 21st of May, and a bright morn- 
ing, and the sun shines, for once, warmly on the 
wall opposite, a low one, of ornamental pattern, 
imitative in brick of wood-work (as if it had been of 
wood-work it would, doubtless, have been painted 
to look like brick). Against this low decorative 
edifice leans a ruddy-faced English boy of seventeen 
or eighteen, in a white blouse and brown corduroy 
trousers, and a domical felt hat; with the sun, as 
as much as can get vinder the rim, on his face, and 
his hands in his jjockets; listlessly watching two 
dogs at play. He is a good boy, evidently, and does 
not care to tvirn the play into a fight;* still it is 
not interesting enough to him, as play, to relieve 
the extreme distress of his idleness, and he occasion- 
ally takes his hands out of his pockets, and claps 
them at the dogs to startle them. . . . 

He leans i^lacidly against the pi'ison-wall this 
bright Sunday morning, little thinking what alumi- 
nous sign-post he is making of himself, and living 
gnomon of sun-dial, of which the shadow points 
sharply to the subtlest cause of the fall of France, 

* This was at seven in the morning, he had them fighting at 
halt-past nine. 



338 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

and of England, as is too likely, after her. Your 
hands in your own pockets, in the morning. That 
is the beginning of the last day; your hands in 
other people's pockets at noon; that is the height 
of the last day; and the jail, ornamented or other- 
wise (assuredly the great jail of the grave), for the 
night.— i^or^, I., pp. 79-81. 

Fools and foolish People. — There is not, to my 
mind, a more woful or wonderful matter of thought 
than the power of a fool. In the world's affairs 
there is no design so great or good but it will take 
tAventy wise men to help it forward a few inches, and 
a single fool can stop it; there is no evil so great or 
so terrible but that, after a multitude of counsel- 
lors have taken means to avert it, a single fool will 
bring it down. Pestilence, famine, and the sword, 
ai*e given into the fool's hand as the arrows into 
the hand of the giant: and if he were fairly set 
forth in the right motley, the web of it should be 
sackcloth and sable; the bells on his cap, passing- 
bells; his badge, a bear robbed of her whelps; and 
his bauble, a sexton's spade. — Modern Painters, IV., 
p. 415. 

The crabby, or insect-like, joint, which you get 
in seaweeds and cacti, means either that the plant 
is to be dragged and wagged here and there at the 
will of waves, and to have no sirring nor mind of its 
own; or else that it has at least no springy inten- 
tion and elasticity of pvirpose, but only a knobby, 
knotty, prickly, malignant stubbornness, and 
incoherent opiniativeness ; crawling about, and 
coggling, and grovelling, and aggregating anyhow, 
like the minds of so many people whom one knows ! 
— Proserpina, p. 113. 

There are always a number of people who have 
the nature of stones; they fall on other persons and 
crush them. Some again have the nature of weeds, 
and twist about other people's feet and entangle 
them. More have the nature of logs, and lie in the 
Avay, so that every one falls over them. And most 
of all have the nature of thorns, and set themselves 



CONDUCT OF LIFE— MORALS. 339 

by waysides, so that every passer-by must be torn, 
and all good seed choked; or perhaps make wonder- 
ful crackling' under various pots, even to the extent 
of practically boiling water and working ijistons. — 
3Ioclern Painters, V., p. 180. 

Conscience. — "I must do what / think right." 
IIow often is this sentence uttered and acted on — 
bravely— nobly — innocently; but always — because 
of its egotism — erringly. You must not do what 
yoii think right, but, whether you or anybody 
think, or don't think it, what is riglit. 

" I must act according to the dictates of my con- 
science." 

By no means, my conscientious friend, unless you 
are quiet sure that yours is not the conscience of 
an ass. 

" I am doing my best — what can man do more ? " 

You might be doing much less, and yet much 
better: — perhaps you are doing your best in produc- 
ing, or doing, an eternally bad thing. — Fors, II., 
p. 420. 

A RIGHT Action not always to be imitated. — It is 
not only possible, but a frequent condition of 
human action, to do right and he right — yet so as to 
mislead other people if they rashly imitate the 
thing done. For there are many rights which are 
not absolutely, but relatively right — right only for 
that person to do under those circumstances, — not 
for this person to do under other circumstances.— 
I'he Two Paths, p. 135. 

The good Seed of Life choked by Weeds and 
Nettles. — It is the sorrowful law of this universe 
that evil, even unconscious and unintended, never 
fails of its effect; and in a state where the evil and 
the good, under conditions of individual " liberty," 
are allowed to contend together, not only every 
stroke on the Devil's side tells— but evei-y slip (the 
mistakes of wicked men being as mischievous as 
their successes); while on the side of right, there 
Avill be much direct and fatal defeat, and, even of 
its measures of victory, half will be fruitless. 



340 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

It is true, of course, that, iii the end of ends, no- 
thing but the right conquers: the prevalent thorns of 
wrong at last crackle away in indiscriminate flaine: 
and of the good seed soAvn, one grain in a thou- 
sand, at last, verily comes up, and somebody lives 
by it; but most of our great teachers — not except- 
ing Carlyle and Emerson themselves— are a little 
too encouraging in their proclamation of this com- 
fort, not, to mj^ mind, very sufficient, when for the 
l^resent our fields are full of nothing but nettles 
and thistles, instead of wheat; and none of them 
seem to me yet to have enough insisted on the in- 
evitable power and infectiousness of all evil, and 
the easy and utter extinguishableness of good. 
Medicine often fails of its effect— but poison never: 
and while, in summing the observation of past life, 
not unwatchfully spent, I canti-uly say that I have 
a thousand times seen patience disappointed of her 
hope, and wisdom of her aim, I have never yet seen 
folly fruitless of mischief, nor vice conclude but in 
calamity. — Time and Tide, p. 51. 

Little Habits. — Every one of those notable i-avines 
and crags is the expression, not of any sudden vio- 
lence done to the mountain, but of its little habits, 
persisted in continually. It was created with one 
ruling instinct; but its destiny depended neverthe- 
less, for effective result, on the dii-ection of the 
small and all but invisible tricklings of water, in 
Avhich the first shower of rain found its way down 
its sides. The feeblest, most insensible oozings of 
the drops of dew among its dust were in reality 
arbiters of its eternal form; commissioned, with a 
touch more tender than that of a child's finger, — as 
silent and slight as the fall of a half-checked tear 
on a maiden's cheek, — to fix forever the forms of 
peak and precii)ice, and hew those leagues of lifted 
granite into the shapes that were to divide the 
earth and its kingdoms. Once the little stone 
evaded,— once the dim furrow traced, — and the peak 
was for ever invested with its majesty, the ravine 
for ever doomed to its degradation. Thencefor- 



CONDUCT OF LIFE— MORALS. 341 

ward, day by day, the subtle habit gained in pow- 
er; the evaded stone was left with wider basement; 
the chosen furrow deepened with swifter-sliding 
wave; repentance and arrest wei-e alike impossible, 
and hour after hour saw written in larger and 
rockier characters upon the sky, the history of tl * 
choice that had been directed by a drop of rain, 
and of the balance that had been turned by a grain 
of ii&n^..— Modern Painters, TV., p. 332. 

Whenever you hear a man dissuading you from 
attempting to do well, on the ground that perfection 
is " Utopian," beware of that man. Cast the word 
out of your dictionary altogether. There is no need 
for it. Things are either possible or impossible— 
you can easily determine which, in any given state 
of human science. If the thing is imiDOSsible, you 
need not trouble yourselves about it; if possible, 
try for it. It is very Utopian to hope for the entire 
doing away with drvinkenness and misery out of 
the Cannongate; but the Utopianism is not our 
business— the loork i^.— Lectures on Architecture, 
p. 43. 

No man ever knew, or can know, what will be 
the ultimate result to himself, or to others, of any 
given line of conduct. But every man may know, 
and most of us do know, what is a just and unjust 
act. And all of us may know also, that the conse- 
quences of justice will be ultimately the best possi- 
ble, both to others and ourselves, though we can 
neither say what is best, nor how it is likely to 
come to Ymsn.—TJnto This Last, p. 14. 

The Neniean Lion is the first great adversary of 
life, whatever that may be— to Hercules, or to any 
of us. then or now. The first monster we have to 
strangle, or be destroyed by, fighting in the dark, 
and with none to help us, only Athena standing by 
to encourage with her smile. Every man's Nenjean 
Lion lies in wait for him somewhere. The slothful 
man says, there is a lion in the path. He says well. 
The quiet ?tMslothful man says the same, and knows 
it too. But they differ in their farther reading of 



S42 A liUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

the text. The slothful man says, /shall be slain, 
and the unslothful, It shall be. It is the first ugly 
and strong enemy that rises against us, all future 
victory depending on victory over that. Kill it; 
and through all the rest of life, what was once 
dreadful is your armor, and you are clothed with 
that conquest for every other, and helmed with its 
crest of fortitude for evermore. — Athena, p. 127. 

Saintship. — The ordinary needs and labors of 
life, the ordinary laws of its continuance, require 
many states of temijer and phases of character, in- 
consistent with the perfectest types of Christianity. 
Pointed ci-ystals cannot be made sea-beaches of, — 
or they must lose their points. Pride, the desire of 
bodily pleasure, anger, ambition, ^ — at least so far 
as the word implies a natural pleasure in govern- 
ing, — pugnacity, obstinacy, and the selfish family 
and personal affections, have all their necessary 
offices, — for the most part, wide and constant, — in 
the economy of the world. The saintly virtues, 
humility, resignation, patience (in the sense of feel- 
ing no anger), obedience (meaning the love of obey- 
ing rather than of commanding), fortitude against 
all temptation of bodily pleasure, and the full-flow- 
ing charity which forbids a selfish love, — are all 
conditions of mind possible to few and manifestly 
meant to furnish forth those who are to be seen as 
fixed lights in the world; — and by no means to be 
the native inheritance of all its fire-flies. Wherever 
these virtues truly and naturally exist, the persons 
endowed with them become, Avithout any doubt or 
difficulty, eminent in blessing to, and in rule over, 
the people round them; and are thankfully 
beloved and remembered as Princes of Grod for 
evermore. . . . The most imperative practical cor- 
ollary which must follow from our rightly under- 
standing these things, is that, seeing the first of the 
saintly virtues is Humility. Nobody must set them- 
selves up to be a saint. . . . For so it is, that the 
white robes of daily humanity are ahvaj's in some 
way or other a little the worse for the wear; and to 



CONDUCT OF LIFE-MORALS. 343 

keep them wholly uiisp,otted from the world, and 
hold the cross in the rij^ht hand, and i^alm in the 
left, steadilj^ through all the rongh walking of it, 
is granted to very, very few creatures that live by 
breath and bread. — Roadside Songs of Tuscany, II., 
p. 38. 

Affiliating with Rogues.— For the failure of 
all good people nowadays is that, associating polite- 
ly with wicked i^ersons, countenancing them in 
their wickedness, and often joining in it, they think 
to avert its consequences by collaterally laboring 
to repair the ruin it has caused; and while, in the 
morning, they satisfy their hearts by ministering to 
the wants of two or three destitute persons, in the 
evening they dine with, envy, and pi-epare them- 
selves to follow the example of the rich speculator 
who has caused the destitution of two or three 
thousand. They are thus destroying moi-e in hours 
than they can amend in years; or, at the best, 
vainly feeding the f;imine-struck populations, in 
the rear of a devouring army, always on the in- 
crease in mass of numbers, and rapidity of march. . . 

Of every person of your acquaintance, you are 
solemnly to ask yourselves, ''Is this njan a swindler, 
a liar, a gambler, an adulterer, a selfish oppressor, 
and taskmaster?" Don't suppose you can't tell. 
You can tell with perfect ease; or, if you meet any 
my^iterious personage of Avhom it proves difficult to 
ascertain whether he be rogue or not, keep clear of 
him till you Ivuow. With those whom you knovi to 
be honest, know to be innocent, knoio to be striv- 
ing, with main purpose, to serve mankind and 
honor their God. you are humbly and lovingly to 
associate yourselves : and with none others. — Fors, 
111., p. 149. 

The Cross is fitted to the Back.— Taking up 
one's cross means simply that you are to go the 
road which you see to be the straight one; carrying 
Avhatever you find is given you .to carry, as Avell 
and stoutly as you can; without making faces, or 
calling people to come and look at you. Above all. 



344 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

you are neither to load nor unload yourself; nor 
cut your cross to you own liking. Some people 
think it would be better for them to have it large; 
and many, that they could carry it much faster if 
it were small; and even those who like it largest 
are usually very particular about its being orna- 
mental, and made of the best ebony. But all that 
you have really to do is to keep your back as 
straight as you can; and not think about what is 
iipon it — above all, not to boast of what is upon it. 
—Ethics of the Dust, p. 89. 

The Modern Tejn' Commandments.—" Thou shalt 
have any other god but me. Thou shalt worship 
every beastly imagination on earth and under it. 
Thou shalt take the name of the Lord in vain to 
mock the poor, for the Lord will hold him guiltless 
who rebukes and gives not; thou shalt remember 
the Sabbath day to keep it profane; thou shalt dis- 
honor thy father and thy mother; thou shalt kill, 
and kill by the million, with all thy might and 
mind and wealth spent in machinery for multifold 
killing; thou shalt look on every woman to lixst 
after her; thou shalt steal, and steal from morning 
till evening, — the evil from the good, and the rich 
from the poor; * thou shalt live by continual lying 
in million-fold sheets of lies (neAvspaper); and covet 
thy neighbor's house, and country, and wealth, 
and fame, and everything that is his." And finally, 
by word of the Devil, in short summary, through 
Adam Smith, "A new commandment give I unto 
you: that ye hate one another."— i^ors, IV., p. 48. 

A NEW Kind of Tombstones.— How beautiful 
the variety of sepulchral architecture might be, in 
any extensive place of burial, if the public would 
meet the small expense of thus expressing its opin- 
ions, in a verily instructive manner; and if some of 
the tombstones accordingly terminated in fools' 
caps; and others, instead of crosses or cherubs, 

* stealing by the poor from the rich is of course still forbidden, 
:ind even in a languid Avay by the poor from tlie poor ; but every 
form of tbeft, forbidden and approved, is practically on the 
increase. 



CONDUCT OF LIFE—MOIiALS. 345 

bore engravings of eats-of-nine-tails, as typical of 
tlie probable methods of entertainment, in the next 
world, of the persons, not, it is to be hoped, repos- 
ing, below. — Fors, I., p. 214. 

Imagination the Basis of Sympathy. — Peoi^le 
would instantly care for others as well as themselves 
if only they could imagine others as well as them- 
selves. Let a child fall into the river before the 
roughest man's eyes; — he will usually do what he 
can to get it out, even at some risk to himself; and 
all the town will triumph in the saving of one little 
life. Let the same man be slioAvn that hundreds 
of children are dying of fever for want of some 
sanitary measure which it will cost him trouble to 
urge, and he will make no effort; and probably all 
the town Avould resist him if he did. — Lectures on 
Art, p. 63. 

The imaginative understanding of the natures of 
others, and the power of putting ourselves in their 
place, is the faculty on which the virtue depends. 
So that an unimaginative person can neither be 
reverent nor kind. The main use of works of fiction, 
and of the drama, is to supplj% as far as possible, 
the defect of this injagination in common minds. — 
Fors, II., p. 79. 

Impossible to be too sensitive. — The ennob- 
ling difference between one man and another, — 
between one animal and another, — is precisely in 
this, that one feels more than another. If we were 
sponges, perhaps sensation might not be easily got 
for us; if we were earth-worms, liable at every in- 
stant to be cut in two by the spade, perhaps too 
much sensation might not be good for us. But, 
being human creatures, it is good for us; nay, we 
are only human in so far as we are sensitive, and 
our honor is precisely in propoi'tion to our passion. 
— Sesame and Lilies, p. 48. 

Cark and Care wear out our Powers.— My 
dear friend and teacher, Lowell — right as he is in 
almost everything — is for once wrong in these lines, 
though with a noble wrongness: — 



346 A liUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

"DisappointiiH'ut's dry and bitter root, 
Envy's harsili borries, and the choking- pool 
Of the world's scorn, are the right niotlier-niilk 
To the tough hearts that pioneer their kind." 

They are not so; love and trust are the only 
niother-niilk of any man's soul. So far as he is 
hated and mistrusted, his powers are destroyed. 
— Modern Painters, V., p. 373. 

Swiss Cottages and Peasants.— Is it not 
strange to reflect, that hardly an evening passes 
in London or Paris hut one of those cottages is 
painted for the better amusement of the fair and 
idle, and shaded with pasteboard pines by the scene- 
shifter; and that good and kind jieople, — poeti- 
cally minded, — delight themselves in imagining the 
happy life led by peasants who dwell by Alpine 
fountains, and kneel to crosses upon jieaks of 
rock? that nightly we lay down our gold to fashion 
forth simulacra of peasants, in gay ribands and 
white ■ bodices, singing sweet songs, and bowing 
gracefully to the picturesque crosses; and all the 
while the veritable peasants are kneeling, song- 
lessly, to veritable crosses, in another temper 
than the kind and fair audiences dream of, and 
assuredly with another kind of answer than is got 
ovit of the opera catastrophe; an answer having re- 
ference, it may be, in dim futurity, to those very 
audiences themselves ? If all the gold that has 
gone to paint the simulacra of the cottages, and to 
put new songs in the mouths of the simulacra of the 
peasants, had gone to brighten the existant cottages, 
and to put new songs into the mouths of the 
existant peasants, it might in the end, perhaps, 
have turned out better so, not only for the peasants, 
but for even the audience. For that form of the 
False Ideal has also its correspondent True Ideal, — 
consisting not in the naked beauty of statues, nor 
in the gauze flowers and crackling tinsel of theatres, 
but in the clothed and fed beauty of living men and 
in the lights and laughs of happy homes. Night 
after night, the desire of such an ideal springs up in 
every idle human heart; and night after night, as 



CONDUCT OF LIFE— MORALS. 347 

far as idleness can, we work out this desire in costly 
lies. We paint the faded actress, build the lath 
landscape, feed our benevolence with fallacies of fe- 
licity, and satisfy our righteousness with poetry of 
justice. The time will come when, as the heavy- 
folded curtain falls upon our own stage of life, we 
shall begin to comprehend that the justice we loved 
Avas intended to have been done in fact, and not in 
poetry, and the felicity we sympathized in, to have 
been bestowed and not feigned. We talk much of 
money's worth, yet perhaps n)ay one day be sur- 
prised to find that what the wise and charitable 
European public gave to one night's rehearsal of 
hypocrisy — to one hour's pleasant warbling of Linda 
or Lucia — would have filled the whole Alpine V^al- 
ley with happiness, and poured the waves of harvest 
over the famine of many a Lammermoor. — Modern 
Painters, IV., p. 343, 344. 

The Casket-Talismans, or invisible Gold.— 
If there were two valleys in California or Austra- 
lia, with two different kinds of gravel in the bottom 
of them; and in the one stream-bed you could dig 
up, occasionally and by good fortune, nuggets of 
gold; and in the other stream-bed, certainly and 
without hazard, you could dig up little caskets, 
containing talismans which gave length of days 
and peace, and alal)aster vases of precious 
balms, which were better than the Arabian Der- 
vish's ointment, and made not only the eyes to see, 
but the mind to know whatever it would, — I wonder 
in Avhich of the stream- beds there would be most 
diggers ? . . . 

Health is money, wit is money, knowledge is 
money; and all your health, and wit, and knowl- 
edge may be changed for gold; and the happy goal 
so reached, of a sick, insane, and blind, auriferous 
old age; but the gold cannot be changed in its turn 
back into health and wit. — Time and Tide, jip. (55, 66. 

A man's hand may be full of invisible gold, and 
the wave of it, or the grasp, shall do more than 
another's with a shower of bullion. This invisible 



348 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

gold, also, does not necessarily dlniinish in spend- 
ing. Political economists will do well some day to 
take heed of it, though they cannot take measure. 
— Unto This Last, p. 41. 

Charities. — All measures of reformation are 
effective in exact proportion to their timeliness : 
partial decay may be cut away and cleansed; in- 
cipient error corrected : but there is a point at 
which corruption can no more be stayed, nor wa,n- 
dering recalled. It has been the manner of modern 
philanthropy to remain passive until that precise 
period, and to leave the sick to perish and the fool- 
ish to stray, while it spent itself in frantic exertions 
to raise the dead, and reform the dust. — Athena, 
p. 95. 

If, suddenly, in the midst of the enjoyments of the 
l^alate and lightnesses of heart of a London dinner- 
party, the walls of the chamber were parted, and 
through their gap, the nearest human beinge who 
Avere famishing, and in misery, were borne into the 
midst of the company — feasting and fancy-free — if, 
pale with sickness, horrible in destitution, broken 
by despair, body by body, they were laid upon the 
soft carpet, one beside the chair of every guest, 
would only the crumbs of the dainties be cast to 
them — would only a passing glance, a passing 
thought be vouchsafed to them ? — Oldening of the 
Crystal Palace, p. 13. 

Letter to Thomas Pocock. — The reason 1 nevef' 
answered was — I now [July 1879] find — the difficulty 
of explaining my fixed principle never to join ip 
any invalid charities. All the foolish world is ready 
to help in them; and will spend large incomes in try- 
ing to make idiots think, and the blind read, but 
will leave the noblest intellects to go to the Devil, 
and the brighest eyes to remain sijiritually blind 
forever ! All my work is to he! j) those who have eyes 
and see not. Ever faithfully yours, J. Ruskijv^.* 

* A letter sent by Mr. Riiskin to the Secretary of the Protes- 
tant Blind Pension Society in answev to an application for pnb- 
scriptions. 



VONDVCT OF LIFE—MOBALS. U9 

1 must add that, to int/ niiud. the prefix of " Prot- 
estant " to your society's name indicates far stonier 
bUndness than any it will relieve. — Aitows of the 
Chace, II., p. 129. 

The Beauty of uncomplaining Labor.— Yon- 
der poor horse, calm slave in daily chains at the 
railroad siding, who drags the detached rear of the 
train to the front again, and slij^s aside so deftly as 
the buffers meet; and, within eighteen inches of 
death every ten minutes, fulfils his dexterous and 
changeless duty all day long, content for eternal 
reward with his night's rest and his champed mouth- 
ful of hay; — anything more earnestly moral and 
beautiful one cannot imagine— I never see the crea- 
ture without a kind of worsliip. — Time and Tide, 
p. 33. 

Countryman and Cit.— It is a sorrowful proof 
of the mistaken ways of the world that the " coun- 
try," in the simple sense of a place of fields and 
trees, has hitherto been the source of reproach to 
its inhabitants, and that the words " countryman," 
" rustic," " clown," " pajsan," " villager," still sig- 
nify a rude and untaught person, as opposed to 
the words " townsman," and " citizen." We accept 
this usage of words, or the evil which it signifies, 
somewhat too quietly; as if it were quite necessary 
and natural that country-people should be rude, 
and towns-people gentle. Whereas I believe that 
the result of each mode of life may, in some stages 
of the worlds progress, be the exact reverse; and 
that another use of words may be forced upon us 
by a new aspect of facts, so that we maj' find our- 
selves saying: "Such and such a person is very 
gentle and kind — he is quite rustic; and such and 
such another i^erson is very rude and ill-taught — he 
is quite urban." — Modern Painters, V., p. 18. 



DOMESTIC SERVANTS. 

The relation of master and servant involves every 
other — touches every condition of moral health 



350 A liUSKlN ANTHOLOGY. 

through the State. Put that right, and you put all 
right. . . . 

There are broadly two ways of mailing good ser- 
vants; the first, a sound, wholesome, thorough- 
going slavery — which was the heathen way, and 
no bad one either, provided you understand that to 
make real " slaves " you must make yourself a real 
"master" (which is not easy). The second is the 
Christian's way: " Whoso delicately bringeth up his 
servant from a child, shall have him become his son 
at the last." And as few people want their servants 
to become their sons, this is not a way to their lik- 
ing. So that, neither having courage or self-disci- 
pline enough on the one hand to make themselves 
nobly dominant after the heathen fashion, nor 
tenderness or justice enough to make themselves 
nobly protective after the Christian, the present 
public thinks to manufacture servants bodily out 
of powder and liay-stufRng— mentally by early in- 
stillation of Catecliism and other m.echanico-relig- 
ious appliances — and economically, as you help- 
lessly suggest, by the law of supply and demand, 
Avith such results as we all see, and most of us more 
or less feel, and shall feel daily more and more to 
our cost and selfish sorrow. 

There is only one way to have good servants; that 
is, to be worthy of being well served. All nature 
and all humanity will serve a good master and rebel 
against an ignoble one. And there is no surer test 
of the quality of a nation than the quality of its 
servants, for they are their masters' shadoAvs and 
distort their faults in a flattened mimicry. . . . 

I am somewhat conceited on the subject of 
servants just now, because I have a gardener who 
lets nie keep old-fashioned plants in the green-hovise, 
understands that my cherries are grown for the 
blackbirds, and sees me gather a bunch of my own 
gTapes without making a wry face. — Arrows of the 
Chace, II., pp. 90-94. 

All the " flunkey-ism," and " servant-gal-ism " of 
modern days, is the exact reflection of the same 



CONDUCT OF LIFE— MORALS. 351 

qualities in the masters and mistresses. A gentle- 
man always makes his servants gentle. — Roadside 
Songs of Tuscany, II., p. 78. 

If you keep slaves to furnish forth your dress — to 
glut your stomach — to sustain your indolence — or 
deck your pride, you are a barbarian. If you keep 
servants, properly cared for, to furnish you with 
Avhat you verily want, and no more than that — you 
are a "civil" person — a person capable of the 
qualities of citizenship. — Time and Tide, p. 90. 

Consider, for instance, what I am doing at 
this very instant — half-past seven, morning, 25th 
February, 1873. It is a bitter black frost, the ground 
deep in snow, and moi'e falling. I am writing com- 
fortably in a perfectly warm room; some of my 
servants were up in the cold at half-past five to get 
it ready for me; others, a few days ago, were digging 
my coals near Durham, at the risk of their lives; 
an old woman brought me my water-cresses through 
the snow for breakfast yesterday; another old 
woman is going two miles through it to-day to fetch 
me my letters at ten o'clock. Half-a-dozen men 
are building a wall for me, to keep the sheej) out of 
my garden, and a railroad stoker is holding his own 
against the north wind to fetch me some Brob- 
dignag raspberry plants to put in it. Somebody 
in the east-end of London is making boots for me, 
for I can't wear those I have much longer; a wash- 
erwoman is in suds, somewhere, to get me a clean 
shirt for to morrow; a fisherman is in dangerous 
weather, someAvhere, catching me some fish for 
Lent; and my cook will soon be making me jDan- 
cakes, for it is Shrove Tuesday. Having written this 
sentence, I go to the fire, warm my fingers, saunter 
a little, listlessly, about the room, and grumble 
because I cant see to the other side of the lake. 

And all these people, my serfs or menials, who are 
undergoing any quantity or kind of hardship I 
choose to put on them, — all these people, neverthe- 
less, are more contented than I am; I can't be 
hapi)j', not I, — for one thing, because I haven't got 



352 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

the MS. Additional (never mind what number), in 
the British Museum, which they bought in 1848, for 
two hundred pounds, and I never saw it ! And 
have never been easy in my mind, since.— i^or.s, I., 
p. 39S. 



THE LIQUOR QUESTION. 

The providence of the Father who would fill 
men's hearts with food and gladness is destroyed 
among us by prostitution of joyless drink; and the 
never to be enough damned guilt of men, and gov- 
ernments, gathering pence at the corners of the 
streets, standing there, pot in hand, crying, " Turn 
in hither; come, eat of my evil bread, and drink 
of my beer, which I have venomously mingled.'' — 
Fors, II., p. 123. 

The sum you spend in liquors, aud in tobacco, 
annually, is One Hundred and Fifty-six Millions nf 
Pounds; on which the pure profit of the richer 
classes (putting the lower alehouse gains aside) is, 
roughly, a hundi-ed millions. That is the way the 
rich Christian Englishman provides against the 
Day of Judgment, expecting to hear his Master say 
to him, " I w^as thirsty — and ye gave me drink — Two 
shillings' worth for twenty-seven and sixpence." 
—Fors,!., p. 383. 

Suppose even in the interest of science, to which 
you are all so devoted, I were myself to bring into 
this lecture-room a country lout of the stupidest, — 
the sort whom you produce by Church of England 
education, and then do all you can to get emigrated 
out of your way; fellows whose life is of no use to 
them, nor anybody else; and that— always in the 
interests of science — I were to lance just the least 
drop out of that beast's [ an asp's ] tooth into his 
throat, and let you see him swell, and choke, and 
get blue and blind, and gasp himself away — you 
wouldn't all sit quiet there, and have it so done — 
would you ? — in the interests of science. . . . 

Well ; but how then if in your own interests ? 



CONDUCT OF LIFE—MOBALS. 3.53 

Suppose the poor lout had his week's wages in his 
pocket — thirty shillings or so; and, after his inocu- 
lation, 1 were to pick his pocket of them; and then 
order in a few more louts, and lance their throats 
likewise, and pick their pockets likewise, and divide 
the pi'oceeds of, say, a dozen of poisoned louts, 
among you all, after lecture: for the seven or eight 
hundred of you, I could perhaps get sixpence each 
out of a dozen of poisoned louts; yet you would 
still feel the proceedings painful to your feelings, 
and wouldn't take the sixpen'orth — ^wouldyou. . . 

Well, I know a village, some few nules frojn Ox- 
ford, numbering of inhabitants some four hundred 
louts, in which my own College of the Body of 
Christ keeps the public-house, and therein sells — 
by its deputy — such poisoned beer that the Rector's 
wife told me, only the day before yesterday, that 
she sent for some to take out a stain in a dress with, 
and couldn't touch the dress with it, it was so filthy 
with salt and acid, to provoke thirst ; and that 
while the public-house was there she had no hope 
of doing any good to the men, who always prepared 
for Sunday by a fight on Saturday night. And that 
my own very good friend the Bursar, and we the 
Fellows, of Corpus, being appealed to again and 
again to shut up that tavern, the answer is always, 
" The College can't aiford it : we can't give up that 
fifty pounds a year, out of those peasant sots' 
pockets, and yet, ' as a College,' live." —Deucalion, 
pp. 200, 201. 

Tobacco. — It is not easy to estimate the demoral- 
izing effect on the youth of Europe of the cigar, in 
enabling them to pass their time haj^pily in idle- 
ness. — Athena, p. G3. 

Tobacco., the most accursed of all vegetables, the 
one that has destroyed for the joreseni even the pos- 
sibility of European civilization. — Proserpina, p. 78. 

Betting. — Of all the ungentlemanly habits into 
wliich you can fall, the vilest is betting, or interest- 
ing yourselves in the issues of betting. It unites 
nearly every condition of folly and vice; you con- 



351 A liUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

centrate your interest upon a matter of chance, in- 
stead of upon a subject of true knowledge; and you 
back opinions which you have no grounds for form- 
ing, merely because they are your own. All the 
insolence of egotism is in this; and so far as the 
love of excitement is complicated with the hope of 
winning money, you turn yourselves into the basest 
sort of tradesmen — those who live by speculation. — 
Croivn of Wild Olive, Lect. III., p. 90. 

Running up Bills.— I would rather, ten times ra- 
ther, hear of a youth that (certain degrees of tempt- 
ation and conditions of resistance being under- 
stood), he had fallen into any sin you chose to name, 
of all the mortal ones, than that he was in the 
habit of running up bills which he could not pay. — 
Time and Tide, p. 117. 



GENTLEMANLINESS AND VULGARITY. 

Vulgarity consists in a deadness of the heart and 
body, resulting from prolonged, and especially from 
inherited conditions of " degeneracy," or literally 
" unraeing;" — gentlemanliness, being another Avord 
for an intense humanity. And vulgarity shows it- 
self primarily in dulness of heai-t, not in rage or 
cruelty, but in inability to feel or conceive noble 
character or emotion. ... It is merely one of the 
forms of Death. 

The illiterateness of a Spanish or Calabrian 
peasant is not vulgar, because they had never an 
opportimity of acquiring letters; but the illiterate- 
ness of an English school-boy is. So again, provin- 
cial dialect is not vulgar; but cockney dialect, the 
corruption, by blunted sense, of a finer language 
continually heard, is so in a deep degree. . . . 

What Constitutes a Gentleman. — A gentle- 
man's first characteristic is that fineness of struct- 
ure in the body, which renders it capable of the 
most delicate sensation; and of structure in the 
mind which renders it capable of the most delicate 
syjupathies — one may say, sim^jly, " fineness of na- 



CONDUCT OF LIFE— MORALS. 355 

ture." This is, of course, compatible with heroic 
bodily strength and mental firmness; in fact, heroic 
strength is not conceivable without such delicacy. 
Elephantine strength may drive its Avay through a 
forest and feel no touch of the boughs; but the white 
skin of Homer's Atrides would have felt a bent rose- 
leaf, yet subdue its feeling in glow of battle, and 
behave itself like iron. . . . 

A perfect gentleman is never reserved, but sweetly 
and entirely open, so far as it is good for others, or 
possible, that he should be. In a great many re- 
spects it is impossible that he should be open except 
to men of his own kind. To them, he can open 
himself, by a word, or syllable, or a glance ; but to 
men not of his kind he cannot open himself, though 
he tried it through an eternity of clear grammatical 
speech. . . . Whatever he said, a vulgar man 
Avould misinterpret: no Avords that he could use 
would bear the same sense to the vulgar man that 
they do to him. If he used any, the vulgar man 
would go away saying, " He had said so and so, and 
meant so and so "' (something assuredly he never 
meant); but he keeps silence, and the vulgar man 
goes away saying, " lie didn't know what to make 
of him." Which is precisely the fact, and the only 
fact Avhich he is anywise able to announce to the 
vulgar man concerning himself. 

There is yet another quite as efficient cause of tho 
apparent reserve of a gentleman. His sensibility 
being constant and intelligent, it will be seldom 
that a feeling touches him, however acutely, but it 
has touched him in the same way often before, and 
in some sort is touching him always. It is not that 
he feels little, but that he feels habitually; a vulgar 
man having some heart at the bottom of him, if 
you can by talk or by sight fairly force the pathos of 
anything down to his heart, will be excited about 
it and demonstrative; the sensation of pity being 
strange to him, and wonderful. But your gentle- 
man has walked in pity all day long; the tears 
have never been out of his eyes: you thought the 
eyes were bright only;' but they were wet. You 



356 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

tell him a sorrowful story, and his countenance 
does not change; the eyes can but be wet still; he 
does not speak, neither, there being, in fact, no- 
thing to be said, only something to be done; some 
vulgar person, beside you both, goes away saying, 
" How hard he is!" Next day he hears that the 
hard person has put good end to the sorrow he said 
nothing about; — and then he changes his wonder, 
and exclaims, " How reserved he is ! " 

Self-command is often thought a characteristic of 
high-breeding : and to a certain extent it is so, at 
least it is one of the means of forming and strength- 
ening character; but it is rather a way of imitating 
a gentleman than a characteristic of him; a true 
gentleman has no need of self-command; he simjily 
feels rightly on all occasions : and desiring to ex- 
press only so much of his feeling as it is right to 
express, does not need to command himself. 

The Letters of the Alphabet in Art. — One 
of the most curious minor qviestions in this matter 
is respecting the vulgarity of excessive neatness, 
complicating itself with inquiries into the distinc- 
tion between base neatness, and the perfectness of 
good execution in the fine arts. It will be found on 
final thought that precision and exquisiteness of 
arrangement are always noble; but become vulgar 
only when they arise from an equality (insensibili- 
ty) of temperament, which is incapable of fine pas- 
sion, and is set ignobly, and with a dullard mechan- 
ism, on accuracy in vile things. In the finest 
Greek coins, the letters of the inscriptions are pur- 
posely coars9 and rude, while the relievi are 
wrought with inestimable care. But in an English 
coin, the letters are the best done, and the whole is 
unredeemably vulgar. ... 

Letters are always ugly things. Titian often 
wanted a certain quantity of ugliness to oppose his 
beauty with, as a certain quantity of black to op- 
pose his color. He could regulate the size and 
quantity of inscription as he liked; and, therefore, 
made it as neat — that is, as effectively ugly — aspos- 



CONDUCT OF LIFE-RELIGION. 357 

si bio. Bvit the Greek sculptor could not regulate 
either size or quantity of inscription. Legible it 
must be to common eyes, and contain an assigned 
group of words. He had more ugliness than he 
wanted, or could endure. There was nothing for it 
but to make the letters themselves rugged and 
picturesque; to give them, that is, a certain quan- 
tity of organic vsiriety.—lfodern Painters, \., pp. 
384, 298. 



CHAPTER II. 

Religion.* 

I do not myself believe in Evangelical theology. — 
Fors, II., p. 4. 

I have been hori-ibly plagued and misguided by 
evangelical people, all my life; and most of all 
lately; but my mother was one, and my Scotch 
aunt; and I have yet so much of the superstition 
left in me, that I can't help sometimes doing as 
evangelical people wish, — for all I know it comes 
to nothing. — Furs, II., p. 184. 

All piety begins in modesty. You must feel that 
you are a very little creature, and that you had 
better do as you are bid. You Avili then begin to 
think what you are bid to do, and who bids it. — 
Vccl D'Arno, p. 104. 

The question to my mind most requiring discus- 
sion and explanation is not, why workmen don't go 
to church, but — why other people do. — Time and 
Tide, p. G5. 

Perhaps if, in this garden of the world, you would 
leave off telling its Master your opinions of him, 
and, much more, your quarrelling about your 
opinions of him; but would simply trust him, and 

* See also the Introduction. 



358 A BUSKIN' ANTHOLOGY.^ 

mind your own business modestly, he miglit have 
more satisfaction in you than he has had yet these 
eighteen hundred and- seventy-one years, or than 
he seems likely to have in the eighteen hundred and 
seventy-second. — Fors, I., p. 162. 

I write this morning, wearily, and withovit spirit, 
being nearly deaf with the bell-ringing and bawl- 
ing which goes on here, at Florence, ceaselessly, in 
advertisement of prayers, and wares; as if people 
could not wait on Grod for what they wanted, but 
God had to ring for them, like waiters, for whati/e 
wanted: and as if they could think of nothing they 
were in need of, till the need was suggested to 
them by bellowing at their doors, or bill-posting on 
their house-corners. — Fois, I., pp. 27.5, 276. 

In Memoriam.— Respect for the dead is not really 
shown by laying great stones on them to tell us 
where they are laid; but by remembering where 
they are laid, without a stone to help us; trusting 
them to the sacred grass and saddened flowers. — A 
Joy For Ever, p. 47. 

The Vice and Ignorance of the modern Evan- 
gelical Sect. — They consist especially in three 
things: First, in declaring a bad translation of a 
group of books of various qualities, accidently 
associated, to be the " Word of God." Secondly, 
reading, of this singular " Word of God," only the 
bits the}' like; and never taking any pains to un- 
derstand even those. Thirdly, resolutely refusing 
to practice even the very small bits they do under- 
stand, if such practice happen to go against theii 
own worldly — especially money — interests. — Fors, 
II., p. 101. 

The Existence of God.— It never seems to strike 
any of our religious teachers, that if a child has a 
father living, it either knows it has a father, or doe* 
not: it does not "believe" it has a father. Wet 
should be surprised to see an intelligent child stand- 
ing at its garden gate, crying out to the passers-by : 
*' I believe in my father, because he built thi? 
house." — Modern Painters, V., p. 271. 



CONDUCT OF LIFE—BELIGION. 339 

Manufactory Chimneys.— The obelisks of our 
English religion.— i'brs', II., p. 807. 

Heaven. — Can you answer a single bold question 
unflinchingly about that other world — Are you 
sure there is a heaven ? Sure there is a hell ? Sure 
that men are drojiping before your faces through 
the pavements of these streets into eternal fire, or 
sure that they are not? Sure that at your own 
death j'ou are going to be delivered from all sorrow, 
to be endowed with all virtue, to be gifted with all 
fecility, and raised into perpetual companionship 
with a King, compared to whom the kings of the 
earth are as grasshoppers, and the nations as the 
dust of His feet? Are you sure of thi^ ?—3If/stery 
of Life, p. in. 

Vicarious Salvation.— There are briefly two, 
and two only, forms of possible Christian, Pagan, 
or any other Gospel, or '' good message :" one, that 
men are saved by themselves doing Avhat is right; 
and the other, that they are saved by believing that 
somebody else did right instead of them. The first 
of these Gospels is eternally true, and holy; the 
other eternally false, damnable, and damning. — 
Fors, III., p. 17. 

Father Dollar. — The creed of the Dark Ages 
was, •' I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, 
Maker of Heaven and Earth;" and the creed of the 
Light Ages has become, " I believe in Father Mud, 
the Almighty Plastic; and in Father Dollar, the 
Almighty Drastic." — Fors, IV., p. 281. 

The First recorded Words of Venice.— In- 
scriptions discovered by Mr.Ruskin on the church 
of St. James of the Rialto: 

"Be thy Cross, O Christ, the true safety of this 
place." 

" Around this temple, let the merchant's laAV be 
just — his weights true, and his agreements guile- 
less."— Fors, IV., p. 17. 

English Religion a Mockery.— Notably, within 
the last hundred years, all rel'^gion has perished 



360 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

from the practically active national mind of France 
and England. No statesman in the senate of either 
country would dare to use a sentence out of their 
acceptedly divine Revelation, as having now a 
literal authority over them for their guidance, or 
even a suggestive wisdom for their contemi^lation. 
England, especially, has cast her Bible full in the 
face of her former God; and proclaimed, with open 
challenge to Him, her resolved worship of His de- 
clared enemy. Mammon. All the arts, therefore, 
founded on religion — and sculpture chiefly — are here 
in England effete and corrupt, to a degree which 
arts never were hitherto in the history of mankind. 
— Aratra Pentelici, p. 38. 

Even your simple country Queen of Maj'', whom 
once you worshipped for a goddess — has not little 
Mr. Faraday analyzed her, and jiroved her to con- 
sist of charcoal and water, combined under Avhat 
the Duke of Argyll calls the "reign of law?" 
Your once fortune-guiding stars, which used to 
twinkle in a mysteriovis manner, and to make you 
wonder what they were^everybody knows what 
they are now : only hydrogen gas; and they stink 
as they twinkle. — Fors, II., p. 199. 

The dramatic Christianity of the organ and aisle, 
of dawn-service and twilight-revival .... this gas- 
lighted, and gas-insi^ired, Christianity, we are 
triumphant in, and drav/ back the hem of our 
robes from the touch of the heretics who dispute 
it. But to do a piece of common Christian right- 
eousness in a plain English word or deed; to make 
Christian law any rule of life, and found one 
national act or hope thereon,— we know too well 
what our faith comes to for that. — Sesame arid 
Lilies, p. 64. 

Truly it is fine Christianity we have come to, 
which, professing to expect the perpetual grace or 
charity of its Founder, has not itself grace or char- 
ity enough to hinder it from overreaching its friends 
in sixpenny bargains ; and which, supplicating 
evening and morning the forgiveness of its own 



CONDUCT OF LIFE— RELIGION. 361 

debts, goes forth at noon to take its fellow-servants 
by the throat, saying, — not merely " Pay me that 
thou owest." but " Pay me that thou owestme/io^." 
— Munera Pulveris, p. 136. 

Nature and God. — The second volume of 
" Modern Painters," though in affected language, 
yet with sincere and very deep feeling, expresses 
the lirst and foundational law respecting human 
contemplation of the natural phenomena under 
whose influence we exist, — that they can only be 
seen with their properly belonging joy, and inter- 
preted up to the measure o^ proper human intelli- 
gence, when they are accepted as the work, and 
the gift, of a Living Spirit greater than our own. — 
Deucalion, p. 304. 

The Religious Life, — whex possible. — The 
delicacy of sensation and refinements of imagina- 
tion necessary to understand Christianity belong 
to the mid period, when men risen from a life of 
brutal hardship are not yet fallen to one of brutal 
luxury. You can neither comprehend the char- 
acter of Christ while you are chopping flints for 
tools, and gnawing raw bones for food; nor Avhen 
you have ceased to do anything with either tools 
or hands, and dine on gelded capons. — Val D' Arno, 
p. 26. 

The unprodigal Son.— I recollect some years 
ago, throwing an assembly of learned persons who 
had met to delight themselves with interpretations 
of the parable of the prodigal son, (interpretations 
which had up to that moment gone very smoothly,) 
into mute indignation, by inadvertently asking 
who the ?t?iprodigal son was, and what was to be 
learned by his example. The leading divine of the 
company, Mr. Molyneux, at last explained to me 
that the unprodigal son was a lay figure, put in 
for dramatic effect, to make the story prettier, and 
that no note was to be taken of him. — Munera 
Pulveris, p. 135. 

Guardian Angels. — Those parents who love 
their children most tenderly cannot but sometimes 



362 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

dwell on the old Christian fancy, that they have 
guardian angels. I call it an old fancy, in deference 
to 3'our njodern enlightenment in religion; but I 
assure you nevertheless, in spite of all that illumi- 
nation, there remains yet some dark possibility 
that the old fancy may be true: and that, although 
the modern apothecary cannot exhibit to you either 
an angel, or an imp, in a bottle, the spiritual powers 
of heaven and hell are no less now, than heretofore, 
contending for the souls of your children; and con- 
tending with you — for the ijrivilege of their tutor- 
ship. — Deucalion, pp. 143, 144. 

Religion to the earlier SciENa'isTs.— In the 
earlier and happier days of Linnfeus, de Saussure, 
von Humboldt, and the multitude of quiet workers 
on whose secure foundation the fantastic expa- 
tiations of modern science depend for whatever of 
good or stability there is in them, natural religion 
was always a part of natural science; it becomes 
with Linnaeus a part of his definitions; it under- 
lies, in serene modesty, the courage and enthusiasm 
of the great travellers and discoverers, from Colum- 
bus and Hudson to Livingstone; and it has saved 
the lives, or solaced the deaths, of myriads of men 
whose nobleness asked for no memorial but in the 
gradual enlargement of the realm of manhood, in 
habitation, and in social virtue. — Deucalion, p. 209. 

Milton and Dante.— I tell you truly that, as I 
strive more with this strange lethargy and trance 
in myself, and awake to the meaning and power of 
life, it seems daily more amazing to me that men 
such as Milton and Dante, should dare to play with 
the most precious truths (or the most deadly un- 
truths), by Avliich the whole human race listening 
to them could be informed, or deceived; — all the 
world their audiences for ever, with pleased ear, 
and passionate heart; — and yet, to this submissive 
infinitude of souls and evermore succeeding and 
succeeding multitude, hungry for bread of life, 
they do but play upon sweetly modulated pipes; 
with pompous nomenclature adorn the councils of 



CONDUCT OF LIFE-RELIGION. 363 

hell; touch a troubadour's guitar to the courses of 
the suns; and fill the openings of eternity, before 
which prophets have veiled their faces, and which 
angels desire to look into, with idle puppets of their 
scholastic iuiagination, and melancholy lights of 
frantic faith in their lost mortal love. — Mystery 
of Life, p. 113. 

Metaphysicians and Philosophers.— I believe 
that metaphysicians and philosophers are, on the 
whole, the greatest troubles the world has go to deal 
with; and that while a tja-ant or bad man is of 
some use in teaching people submission or indigna- 
tion, and a thoroughly idle man is only harmful in 
setting an idle example, and communicating to 
other lazy people his own lazy misunderstandings, 
busy metaphysicians are always entangling good 
and active people, and weaving cobwebs among 
the finest wheels of the world's business ; and are 
as much as possible, by all prudent persons, to be 
brushed out of their way, like spiders,, and the 
meshed weed that has got into the Cambridgeshire 
canals, and other such impediments to barges and 
business. — Modern Painters, III., p. 387. 

There is some difficulty in understanding why 
some of the lower animals were made. I lost great 
part of my last hour for reading, yesterday even- 
ing, in keeping my kitten's tail out of the candles, 
— a useless beast, and still more useless tail — aston- 
ishing and inexplicable even to herself. Inexplic- 
able, to me, all of them — heads and tails alike. 
"Tiger — tiger — burning bright'" — is this then all 
you were made for — this ribbed hearthrug, tawny 
and black ? 

If only the Rev. James McCosh were here! His 
book is; and I'm sur% I don't know how, but it 
turns up in re-arranging my library : Method of the 
Divine Government, Physical and Moral. Preface 
begins. " We live in an age in which the reflecting 
portion of mankind are much addicted to the con- 
templation of the works of Nature. It is the object 
of the author in this Treatise to interrogate Nature 



364 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

with the view of iiiakiiifj^ her utter her voice in 
answer to some of the most important questions 
which the inquiring spirit of man can put." Here 
is a catechumen for you ! — and a catechist ! Na- 
ture with her hands behind her back — Perhaps Mr. 
McCosh would kindly put it to her about the tiger. 
Farther on, indeed, it is stated that the finite cannot 
comprehend the infinite, and I observe that the 
author, with the shrinlving modesty characteristic 
of the clergy of his persuasion, feels that even the 
intellect of a McCosh cannot, without risk of error, 
embrace more than the present method of the 
Divine management of Creation. Wherefore "no 
man," he says, "should presume to point out all 
the ways in which a God of unbounded resources 
might govern the universe." — Fors, I., p. 381. 

Immortality, or the Gradation of Life. — You 
may at least earnestly believe, that the presence of 
the spirit which culminates in your own life, shows 
itself in dawning, wherever the dust of the earth 
begins to assume any oi'derly and lovely state. You 
will find it impossible to separate this idea of 
gradated manifestation from that of the vital 
power. Things are not either wholly alive, or 
wholly dead. They are less or more alive. Take 
the nearest, most easily examined instance — the life 
of a flower. Notice what a different degree and 
kind of life there is in the calyx and the corolla. 
The calyx is nothing but the swaddling clothes of 
the floAver; the child-blossom is bound up in it, 
hand and foot; guarded in it, restrained by it, till 
the time of birth. The shell is hardly more subor- 
dinate to the germ in the egg, than the calyx to 
the blossom. It bursts at last; but it never lives 
as the corolla does. It may fall at the moment its 
task is fulfilled, as in the poppy; or Avither gradu- 
ally, as in the buttercup; or persist in a ligneous 
apathy, after the flower is dead, as in the rose; or 
harmonize itself so as to share in the aspect of the 
real flower, as in the lily; but it never shares in 
the corolla's bright passion of life. And the grada- 



CONDUCT OF LIFE— RELIGION. 365 

tions which thus exist between tlie different mem- 
bers of organic creatures, exist no less between the 
different ranges of organism. We know no higher 
or more energetic life than our own; but there 
seems to me this great good in the idea of gradation 
of life — it admits the idea of a life above us, in 
other creatures, as much nobler than ours, as ours 
is nobler than that of the dust. — Ethics of the Dust, 
Lect. X., p. 130. 

Co^vsECRATED WATER. — The water which has 
been refused to the cry of the weary and dying is 
unholy, though it had been blessed by every saint 
in heaven; and the water which is found in the 
vessel of mercy is holy, though it had been defiled 
with corpses. — King of the Golden River, p. 47. 

Consecrated Grou^'d.— Put a rough stone for 
an altar under the hawthorn on a village green;^ 
separate a portion of the green itself with an ordi- 
nary i^aling from the rest; — then consecrate, with 
wh^itever form you choose, the space of grass you 
have enclosed, and meet within the wooden fences 
often as you desire to pray or preach; yet you will 
not easily fasten an impression in the minds of the 
villagers, that God inhabits the space of grass inside 
the fence, and does not extend His presence to the 
common beyond it: and that the daisies and violets 
on one side of the railing are holy, — on the other, 
pi-ofane. But, instead of a wooden fence, build a 
wall; pave the interior space; roof it over, so as to 
make it comparatively dark;— and you may per- 
suade the villagers with ease that jou have built a 
house which Deity inhabits, or that you have be- 
come, in the old French phrase, a logeur du Bon 
Dieu-— Lectures on Art, p. 43. 

Bad Art i:v Religion.— The habitual use of bad 
art (ill-made dolls and bad pictures), in the services 
of religion, naturally blunts the delicacy of the 
senses, by requiring reverence to be paid to ugli- 
ness, and familiarizing the eye to it in moments of 
strong and pui'e feeling; I do not think we can 
overrate the probable evil results of this enforced 



366 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

discordance between the sight and imagination.— 
Modern Painters, IV., p. 357. 

Statues as Symbols and Statues as Idols.— 
When tlie popuhice of Paris adorned tlie statue of 
Strasbourg witli immortelles, none, even the sim- 
plest of the pious decorators, would suppose that 
the city of Srasbourg itself, or any spirit or ghost 
of the city, was actually there, sitting in the Place 
de la Concorde. The figure was delightful to them 
as a visible nucleus for their fond thoughts about 
Strasbourg; but never for a moment supposed to 
he Strasbourg. Similarly, they might have taken 
delight in a statue purporting to represent a river 
instead of a city, — the Rhine, or Gfaronne, suppose, 
— and have been touched with strong emotion in 
looking at it, if the real river were dear to them, 
and yet never think for an instant that the statue 
was the river. And yet again, similarly, but much 
more distinctly, they might take delight in the 
beautiful image of a god, because it gathered and 
perpetuated their thoughts about that god; and 
yet never suppose, nor be capable of being deceived 
by any arguments into supposing, that the statue 
vms the god. On the other hand, if a meteoric 
stone fell from the sky in the sight of a savage, and 
he picked it up hot, he would most probably lay it 
aside in some, to him, sacred place, and believe the 
stone itself to be a kind of god, and offer prayer 
and sacrifice to it.— Aratra Pentelici, p. 34. 

The Olympic Zeus may be taken as a sufficiently 
central type of a statue which was no more sup- 
posed to &e Zeus, than the gold or elephants' tusks 
it was made of; but in which the most splendid 
powers of human art were exhausted in represent- 
ing a believed and honored God to the happy and 
holy imagination of a sincerely religious people.— 
Aratra Pentelici, p. 3G. 

I am no advocate for image-worship, as I believe 
the reader Avill elsewhere sufficiently find; but I am 
very sure that the Protestantism of London would 
have found itself quite as secure in a cathedral 



CONDUCT OF LIFE— RELIGION. 367 

decorated with statues of good men, as in one hung 
round with bunches of Ribston pippins. — Stones of 
Venice, I., p. 333. 

Sensational Religious Art.— I do not thinlt 
that any man, wlio is thoroughly certain that 
Christ is in the room, will care what sort of pictures 
of Christ he has on its walls; and, in the plurality 
of cases, the delight taken in art of this kind is, 
in reality, nothing more than a form of graceful 
indulgence of those sensibilities which the habits 
of a disciplined life restrain in other directions. 
Such art is, in a word, the opera and drama of the 
monk. Sometimes it is worse than this, and the 
love of it is the mask under which a general thirst 
for morbid excitement will pass itself for religion. 
The young lady who rises in the middle of the day, 
jaded by her last night's ball, and utterly incapable 
of any simple or wholesome religious exercise, can 
still gaze into the dark eyes of the Madonna di San 
Sisto, or dream over the whiteness of an ivory 
crucifix, and returns to the course of her daily life 
in fvill persuasion that her morning's feverishness 
has atoned for her evening's folly. — Modern Paint- 
ers, III., p. 75. 



THE BIBLE. 

The Bible is the grandest group of writings ex- 
istent in the rational world, put into the grandest 
language of the rational world in the first strength 
of the Christian faith, by an entirely wise and kind 
saint, St. Jerome : translated afterwards with 
beauty and felicity into every language of the 
Christian world; and the guide, since so translated, 
of all the arts and acts of that world which have 
been noble, fortunate and hajipy. — Letter to ''Pall 
Mall Gazette;' 18S6. 

The Word of God, by which the heavens were, 
of old, and by which they are now kept in store, 
cannot be made a i^resent of to anybody in morocco 
binding ; nor sown on any wayside by help either 



368 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

of steam-plough or steam-press; but is nevertheless 
being offered to us daily, and by us with contumely 
refused; and sown in us daily, and by us as instantly 
as may be, choked. — Sesame and Lilies, p. 39. 

The way in which common people read their 
Bibles is just like the way that the old monks 
thought hedgehogs ate grapes. They rolled them- 
selves (it was said), over and over, where the grapes 
lay on the ground. What fruit stuck to their 
spines, they carried off, and ate. So your hedge- 
hoggy readers roll themselves over and over their 
Bibles, and declare that whatever sticks to their 
own spines is Scripture; and that nothing else is. — 
M7iics of the Dust, Lect. V., p. 68. 

I am a simpleton, am I, to quote such an exploded 
book as Genesis ? My good wiseacre readers, I knoAV 
as many flaws in the book of Grenesis as the best of 
you, but I knew the book before I knew its flaws, 
while you know the flaws, and never have known 
the book, nor can know it. And it is at present 
much the worse for you ; for indeed the stories of 
this book of Grenesis have been the nursery tales of 
men mightiest whom the world has yet seen in art, 
and policy, and virtue, and none of yon will write 
better stories for your children, yet awhile. — Fors, 
II., p. 199. 

The Bible is, indeed, a deep book, when depth 
is required, that is to say, for deep peoijle. But it 
is not intended, particularly, for profound persons; 
on the contrary, much more for shallow and sim- 
ple persons. And therefoi-e the first, and generally 
the main and leading idea of the Bible, is on its 
surface, written in plainest possible Greek, Hebrew, 
or English, needing no penetration, nor amplifica- 
tion, needing nothing but what we all might give — 
attention. 

But this, which is in every one's power, and is the 
only thing that God wants, is just the last thing 
any one will give Him. We are delighted to ram- 
ble away into day-dreams, to repeat pet verses from 
other places, suggested by chance words; to snap at 



CONDUCT OF LIFE— RELIGION. 369 

an expression which suits oiu* own particuhir views, 
or to di}^- up a meaning from under a verse, M^hich 
we sliould be amiably grieved to think any human 
being luid been so happy as to find before. But 
the plain, intended, immediate, fruitful meaning, 
which every one ought to find always, and espe- 
cially that which depends on our seeing the rela- 
tion of the verse to those near it, and getting the 
force of the whole passage, in due relation — this 
sort of significance we do not look for ; — it being, 
truly, not to be discovered unless we really attend 
to what is said, instead of to our own feelings. 

It is unfortunate also, but very certain, that in 
order to attend to what is said, we must go through 
the irkesomeness of knowing the meaning of the 
words. And the first thing that children should 
be taught about their Bibles is, to distinguish 
clearly between words that they understand and 
words that they do not; and to put aside the words 
they do not understand, and verses connected with 
them, to be asked about, or for a future time; and 
never to think they are reading the Bible when 
they are merely repeating phrases of an unknoAvn 
tongue. — Modern Painters, V., p. 166. 

IiELii AND THE DEVIL. — I do not merely believe 
thei-e is such a place as hell. I know there is such 
a place; and I know also that when men have got 
to the point of believing virtue imi^ossible but 
through dread of it, they have got into it. . . . 

I mean, that according to the distinctness with 
Avhich they hold such a creed, the stain of nether 
fire has passed upon them. . . . 

Yet though you should assuredly be able to hold 
your own in the straight ways of God, without al- 
ways believing that the Devil is at your side, it is a 
state of mind much to be dreaded, that you should 
not knoio the Devil when you see him there. For 
the probability is, that when you see him, the way 
you are walking in is not one of God's ways at all, 
but is leading you into quite other neighborhoods 
than His. On His way, indeed, you may often, like 



370 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

Albert Durer's Knight, see the Fiend behind you, 
but you will find that he drops always farther and 
farther behind; Avhereas if he jogs with you at your 
side, it is probably one of his own by-paths you 
are got on. . . . 

Every faculty of man's soul, and every instinct 
of it by which he is meant to live, is exposed to its 
own special form of corruption : and whether 
within Man, or in the external world, there is a 
power or condition of temptation which is perpetu- 
ally endeavoring to reduce every glory of his soul, 
and every power of his life, to such corruption as is 
possible to them. And the more beautiful they are, 
the more fearful is the death which is attached as a 
penalty to their degradation. . . . 

Take for instance religion itself : the desire of 
finding out Grod, and placing one's self in some true 
son's or servant's relation to Him. The Devil, that 
is to say, the deceiving spirit within us, or outside 
of us, mixes up our own vanity with this desire ; 
makes us think that in our love to God we have 
established some connection Avith Him which se^Dar- 
ates us from our fellow-men, and renders us supe- 
rior to them. Then it takes but one wave of the 
Devil's hand ; and we are burning them alive for 
taking the liberty of contradicting us. 

Take the desire of teaching — the eternally unself- 
ish and noble instinct for telling to those Avho are 
ignorant, the truth we know, and guarding them 
from the errors we see them in danger of ;— there is 
no nobler, no more constant instinct in honorjible 
breasts ; but let the Devil formalize, and mix the 
pride of a profession with it — get foolish people 
entrusted with the business of instruction, and make 
their giddy heads giddier by putting them up in 
pulpits above a submissive crowd — and you have 
it instantly corrupted into its own reverse ; you 
have an alliance against the light, shrieking at the 
sun, and moon, and stars, as profane spectra : — a 
company of the blind, beseeching those they lead 
to remain blind also. " The heavens and the lights 
that rule them are untrue; the laws of creation are 



CUNDUCT OF LIFR-RELiaiON. 371 

treacherous; the poles of the earth are out of poise. 
But loe are true. Light is in us only. Shut your 
eyes close and fast, and we will lead you." . . . 

Take the instinct for justice, and the natural 
sense of indignation against crime ; let the Devil 
color it with personal passion, and you have a 
mighty race of true and tender-hearted men living 
for centuries in such bloody feud that every note 
and word of their national songs is a dirge, and 
every rock of their hills is a grave-stone. . . . 

Now observe— I leave you to call this deceiving 
sijirit what you like — or to theorize about it as you 
like. All that I desire you to recognize is the fact 
of its being here, and the need of its being fought 
with. . . . 

This oHMw'-present fiend — . . . He is the person 
to be "voted" against, my working friend; it is 
worth something, having a vote against Mm, if you 
can get it! Which you can, indeed; but not by 
gift from Cabinet Ministers; you must work warily 
with your own hands, and drop sweat of heart's 
blood, before yovi can record that vote effectually. 
— Time and Tide, pi?. 40-44. 

Liturgies. — All that has ever been alleged 
against forms of worship, is justly said only of 
those which are compiled without sense, and em- 
ployed without sincerity. The earlier services of 
the Catholic Church teach men to think, as well as 
pray ; nor did ever a soul in its immediate distress 
or desolation, find the forms of petition learnt in 
childhood, lifeless on the lips of age. — Broadside 
Songs, p. 142. 

I think that our couimon prayer that God " would 
take away all ignorance, hardness of heart, and 
contempt of His word, from all Jews, Turks, Infidels, 
and Heretics," is an entirely absurd one. I do not 
think all Jews have hard hearts; nor that all Infi- 
dels would despise God's word, if only they could 
hear it ; nor do 1 in the least know whether it 
is my neighbor or myself who is really the Heretic. 
But 1 pray that prayer for myself as well as others; 



372 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

and in this form, that God would make all Jews hon- 
est Jews, all Turks honest Turks, all Infidels honest 
Infidels, and all Evangelicals and Heretics honest 
Evangelicals and Heretics ; that so these Israelites 
in whom there is no guile, Turks in whom there is 
no guile, and so on, may in due time see the face, 
and know the power, of the King alike of Israel 
and Esau. — Fors, II., p. 4. 

" The English Liturgy — evidently drawn up with 
the amiable intention of making religion as pleas- 
ant as possible, to a peojile desirous of saving their 
souls with no great degree of personal inconvenience 
— is perhaps in no point more unAvholesomely 
lenient than in its concession to the popular con- 
viction that we may obtain the present advantage, 
and escape the future punishment, of any sort of 
iniquity, by dexterously concealing the manner of 
it from man, and triumphantly confessing the 
quantity of it to God." — The Lord's Prayer and The 
Church, Letter X. 

Ecclesiastical Fish-Mongers.— In order to have 
fresh fish you must have no middlemen, or peddlers, 
but the carrying of the fish must be done for you 
by gentlemen. They may stagger on perhai:)S a 
year or two more in their vain ways; but the day 
must come when your poor little honest puppy, 
whom his people have been wanting to dress up in 
a surplice, and call " The to be Feared," that he 
might have pay enough, by tithe or tax, to marry a 
pretty girl, and live in a parsonage — some poor lit- 
tle honest wretch of a puppy, I say, will eventually 
get it into his glossy head that he would be incom- 
parably more reverend to mortals, and acceptable to 
St. Peter and all Saints, as a true monger of sweet 
fish, than a false fisher for rotten souls ; and that 
his wife would be incomparably more " lady-like" 
— not to say Madonna-like — marching beside him 
in purple stockings and sabots — or even frankly 
barefoot — with her creel full of caller herring on 
her back, than in administering anj^ quantity of 
Ecclesiastical scholarship to her Sunday-schools. 



CONDUCT OF LIFE—liELIGION. 373 

"How dreadful— how atrocious ! "—thinks the 
tender clerical lover. "J/y wife walk with a fish- 
basket ou her back ! " 

Yes, you young scamp, yours. You Avere going 
to lie to the Holy Ghost, then, were you, only that 
she might wear satin slippers, and be called a 
"lady?" .... 

To hew wood— to draw water;— you think these 
base businesses, do you ? and that you are noble, 
as well as sanctified, in binding faggot-burdens on 
poor men's backs, Avhich you Avill not touch with 
your own fingers;— and in preaching the efficacy of 
baptism inside the church, by yonder stream (under 
the first bridge of the Seven Bridge Road here at 
Oxford,) while the sweet waters of it are choked 
with dust and dung, within ten fathoms from your 
font;— and in giving benediction with two fingers 
and your thumb, of a superfine quality, to the 
Marquis of B. ? llonester benediction, and more 
efficacious, can be had cheaper, gentlemen, in the 
existing market. Under my own system of regulat- 
ing prices, I gave an Irish woman twopence yester- 
day for two oranges, of which fruit— under pressure 
of competition— she was ready to supply me with 
three for a penny. "The Lord Almighty take you 
to eternal glory ! " said she.— Foy^, II., pp. 150, 1.51. 

Bishops.— Does any man, of all the men who 
have received this charge, of the office of Bishop, 
in England, know what it is to be a wolf ?— recog- 
nize in himself the wolfish instinct, and the thirst 
for the blood of God's flock ? For if he does not 
know what is the nature of a wolf, how should he 
know what it is to be a shepherd ? If he never felt 
like a wolf himself, does he know the people who 
do ? lie does not expect them to lick their lips and 
bare their teeth at him, I suppose, as they do in a 
pantomime ? Did he ever in his life see a wolf com- 
ing, and debate with himself whether he should 
fight or fly?— or is not rather his whole life one 
headlong iilreling's flight, without so much as turn- 
ing his head to see what manner of beasts they are 



374 ^ It US KIN ANTHOLOGY. 

that follow ?— nay, are not his very hireling's wages 
paid him /or flying instead of fighting? 

Dares any one of them answer me— here from my 
College of the Body of Christ I challenge every 
mitre of them : definitely, the Lord of St. Peter's 
borough, whom I note as a pugnacious and accur- 
ately worded person, and hear of as an outsi^oken 
one, able and ready to answer for his fulfilment of 
the charge to Peter : How many wolves does he 
know in Peterborough— how many sheep ?— what 
battle has he done— what bites can he show the 
scars of? — whose sins has he remitted in Peter- 
borough — whose retained ?— has he not remitted, 
like his brother Bishops, all the sins of the rich, 
and retained all those of the poor ?— does he know, 
in Peterborough, who are fornicators, v/ho thieves, 
who liars, who murderers ?— and has he ever dared 
to tell any one of them to his face that he was so— 
if the man had over a hundred a jea.r?—Fors, II., 
p. 329. 

The first thing, therefore, that a bishop has to do 
is at least to put himself in a position in which, at 
any moment, he can obtain the history from child- 
hood of every living soul in his diocese, and of its 
present state. Down in that back street, Bill and 
Nancy, knocking each other's teeth out ! — Does the 
bishop know all about it ? Has he his eye upon 
them? Has he Jiad his eye upon them? Can he 
circumstantially explain to us how Bill got into 
the habit of beating Nancy about the liead ? If 
he cannot, he is no bishop, though he had a mitre 
as high as Salisbury steeple.— Sesame and Lilies, 
p. 43. 

The real difficulty of our Ecclesiastical party has 
of late been that they could not venture for their 
lives to explain the Decalogue, feeling that Modern- 
ism and all the practices of it must instantly be 
turned inside-out, and upside down, if they did ; 
but if, without explaining it, they could manage 
to get it said every Sunday, and a little agreea,ble 
tune on the organ played after every clause of it, 



CONDUCT OF LTFE—RELIGIOK. 375 

that perchance would do, (on the assumption, rend- 
ered so highly probable by Mr. Darwin's discoveries, 
respecting the modes of generation in the Orchidese, 
that there laas no God, except the original Baalze- 
bub of Ekron, Lord of Bluebottles and fly-blowing 
in general; and that this Decalogue was only ten 
crotchets of Moses's and not God's at all,)— on such 
assumption, I say, they thought matters might 
still be "kept quiet a few years longer in the Cathe- 
dral Close, especially as Mr. Bishop was always so 
agreeably and iuoifensively pungent an element of 
London Society ; and Mrs. Bishop and Miss Bishop 
so extremely proper and pleasant to behold, and 
the grass of the lawn so smooth shaven. But all 
that is drawing very fast to its end. Poor dumb 
dogs that they are, and blind mouths, the grim 
wolf with privy paw daily devouring apace, and 
nothing said, and their people loving to have it so, 
I know not what they will do in the end thereof ; 
but it is near. Disestablishment? Yes, and of 
more powers than theirs. — Fors, IV., p- 26. 

The Pulpit of To-day. —The particular kinds of 
folly also which lead youths to become clergymen, 
uncalled, are especially intractable. That a lad 
just out of his teens, and not under the influence of 
any deep religious enthusiasm, should ever contem- 
plate the possibility of his being set up in the mid- 
dle of a mixed company of men and women of the 
world, to instruct the aged, encourage the valiant, 
support the weak, reprove the guilty, and set an 
example to all ; — and not feel what a ridiculous 
and blasphemous business it would be, if he only 
pretended to do it for hire; and what a ghastly and 
murderous business it would be, if he did it sti-enu- 
ously wrong; and what a marvellous and all but 
incredible thing the Church and its power must be, 
if it were possible for him, with all the good mean- 
ing in the world, to do it rightly;— that any youth, 
I say, should ever have got himself into the state of 
recklessness, or conceit, required to become a clergy- 
man at all, under these existing circumstances, 



876 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

must put him quite out of the pale of those whom 
one appeals to on any reasonable or moral question, 
in serious writing. 

I went into a ritualistic church, the other day, 
for instance, in the West End. It was built of bad 
Gothic, lighted with bad painted glass, and had its 
Litany intoned, and its sermon delivered — on the 
(Subject of wheat and chaff— by a young man of, 
as far as I could judge, very sincere religious 
sentiments, but very certainly the kind of person 
whom one might have brayed in a mortar among 
the very best of the wheat with a pestle, without 
making his foolishness depart from him. And, in 
general, any man's becoming a clergyman in these 
days implies that, at best, his sentiment has over- 
poAvered his intellect; and that, whatever the feeble- 
ness of the latter, the victory of his impertinent 
piety has been probably owing to its alliance with 
his conceit, and its iDromise to him of the gratifica- 
tion of being regarded as an oracle, without the 
trouble of becoming wise, or the grief of being so. 

It is not, hoAvever, by men of this stamp that the 
princii^al mischief is done to the Church of Christ. 
Their foolish congregations are not enough in 
earnest even to be mislead ; and the increasing 
London or Liverpool respectable suburb is simply 
provided with its baker's and butcher's shop, its 
ale-house, its itinerant organ-grinders for the week, 
and stationary organ-grinder for Sunday, himself 
his monkey, in obedience to the commonest condi- 
tion of demand and supply, and without much 
more danger in their Sunday's entertainment than 
in their Saturday's. But the importunate and zeal- 
ous ministrations of the men who have been strong 
enough to deceive themselves before they deceive 
others ; — who give the grace and glow of vital sin- 
cerity to falsehood, and lie for God from the ground 
of their heart, produce forms of moral corruption 
in their congregations as much more deadly than 
the consequences of recognizedly vicious conduct, 
as the hectic of consumption is more deadly than 
the flush of tempoi-ary fever. — Fors, II., pp. 335-327. 



CONDUCT OF LIFE-BELI(;lON. 377 

The Simony of to-day dilTers only from that of 
apostolic times, in that, while the elder Simon 
thought the gift of the Holy Ghost worth a consid- 
erable offer in ready money, the modern Simon 
Avould on the whole refuse to acceftt the same gift 
of the Third Person of the Trinity, Avithout a nice 
little attached income, a pretty church, with a 
steeple restored by Mr. Scott, and an eligible neigh- 
borhood. . . . 

In defence of this Profession, with its pride, privi- 
lege, and more or less roseate repose of domestic 
felicity, extremely beautiful and enviable in coun- 
try parishes, the clergy, as a body, have, with what 
energy and power was in them, repelled the advance 
both of science and scholarship, so far as either 
interfered with what they had been accustomed to 
teach ; and connived at every abuse in public and 
private conduct, with which they felt it would be 
considered uncivil, and feared it might ultimately 
prove unsafe, to interfere. — Furs, II., i^p. 439, 440. 

The extreme degradation and exhaustion of the 
power of the priests, or clergy, of so-called civilized 
"society" is shown, it seems to me, conclusively, 
by their absence from the dramatis persona', in 
higher imaginative literature. It is not through 
courtesy that the clergy never appear upon the 
stage, but because the playwright thinks that thej' 
have no more any real share in human events* and 
this estimate is still more clearly shown by their 
nonentity in the stories of powerful novels. Con- 
sider what is really told us of the priesthood in 
modern England, by the fact that in the work of 
our greatest metropolitan novelist, it appears, as a 
consecrated body, not at all; and as an active or 
visible one, only in the figures of Mr. Stiggins and 
Mr. Chadband ! To the fall of the Church in Scot- 
land, the testimony of the greatest of Scotchmen is 
still more stern, because given with the profoundest 
knowledge of all classes of Scottish society. In 
The Antiquary, how much higher, in all moral and 
spiritual function, Edie Ochiltree stands than Mr. 



373 A BUSKm ANTHOLOGY. 

Blattergowl ; in The Heart of Mid-Lothian, liow 
far superior Jeaiiie is to her husband. . .- . I have 
always said that everything evil in Europe is pri- 
marily the fault of her bishoi^s. . . . But while the 
faults of the clergy are open to the sight and cavil 
of all men, their modest and constant virtues, past 
and present, acting continually like mountain 
wells, through secret channels, in the kindlj' min- 
istry of the parish priest, and the secluded prayer 
of the monk, are also the root of what yet remains 
vital and happy among European races. — Roadside 
iSongs of Tuscany, pp. 100, 107. 

The Religio:v of the Greeks.— You may obtain 
a more truthful idea of the nature of Greek religion 
and legend from the poems of Keats, and the nearly 
as beautiful, and, in general grasi? of subject, far 
more powerful, recent work of Morris, than from 
frigid scholarship, however extensive. — Athena, 
p. 19. 

The Greek creed was, of course, different in its 
character, as our own creed is, according to the 
class of people who held it. The common people's 
Avas quite literal, simple, and happy : their idea 
of Athena was as clear as a good Roman Cath- 
olic peasant's idea of the Madonna. . . . Then, 
secondly, the creed of the upper classes was more 
refined and spiritual, but quite as honest, and 
even more forcible in its effect on the life. . . . 
Then, thirdly, the faith of the poets and artists 
was, necessarily, less definite, being continually 
modified by the involuntary action of their own 
fancies ; and by the necessity of presenting, in clear 
verbal or material form, things of which they had 
no authoritative knowledge. Their faith was, in 
some respects, like Dante's or Milton's : firm in 
general conception, but not able to vouch for every 
detail in the forms they gave it : but they Avent 
considerably farther, even in that minor sinceritj', 
than subsequent poets ; and strove with all their 
might to be as near the truth as they could. Pindar 
says, quite simply, "I cannot think so-and-so of 



CONDUCT OF LIFE— RELIGION. 379 

the Gods. It must have been this way— it cannot 
have been that way— that the thing was done." 
And as late among the Latins as the days of Hor- 
ace, this sincerity remains. Horace is just as true 
and simple in his religion as Wordsworth. . . . 
'' Operosa parmis carmina Jingo — \, little thing 
that I am, weave my laborious songs " as earnestly 
as the bee among the bells of thyme on the Matin 
mountains. Yes, and he dedicates his favorite pine 
to Diana, and he chants his autumnal hymn to 
the Faun that guards his fields, and he guides the 
noble youths and maids of Rome in their choir to 
Apollo, and he tells the farmer's little girl that the 
Gods will love her, though she has only a handful 
of salt and meal to give them— just as earnestly 
as ever English gentleman taught Christian faith 
to English youth in England's truest days. —.4f7t6'Jia, 
pp. 45-47. 

Christianity in the Middle Ages.— For many 
centuries the Knights of Christendom wore their 
religion gay as their crest, familiar as their gaunt- 
let, shook it high in the summer air, hurled it 
fiercely in other people's faces, grasped their spear 
the firmer for it, sat their horses the prouder; but it 
never entered into their minds for an instant to ask 
the meaning of it ! " Forgive us our sins: " by all 
means — yes, and the next garrison that holds out a 
day longer than is convenient to us, hang them 
every man to his battlement. "Give us this day 
our daily bread," — yes, and our neighbor's also, 
if Ave have any luck. " Our Lady and the Saints ! " 
Is there any infidel dog that doubts of them ?— in 
God's name, boot and spur — and let us have the 
head ofif him. It went on so, frankly and bravely, 
to the twelfth century, at the earliest ; when men 
begin to think in a serious manner; more or less of 
gentle manners and domestic comfort being also 
then conceivable and attainable. Rosamond is not 
any more asked to drink out of her father's skull. 
Rooms begin to be matted and Avainscoted ; shops 
to hold store of marvellous foreign wares ; knights 



380 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

and ladies learn to spell, and to read, with pleasure, 
Music is everywhere; — Death, also. Much to enjoy 
— much to learn, and to endure — with Death 
always at the gates. " If war fail thee in thine 
own country, get thee with haste into another," 
says the faithful old French knight to the boy- 
chevalier, in early fourteeth century days. 

No country stays more than two centuries in this 
intermediate phase between Faith and Reason. In 
France it lasted from about 1150 to 1350 ; in Eng- 
land, 1200 to 1400 ; in Venice, 1300 to 1500. The 
course of it is always in the gradual development of 
Christianity,— till her yoke gets at once too aerial, 
and too straight, for the mob, who break through 
it at last as if it were so much gossamer; and at the 
same fatal time, Avealth and luxury, with the vanity 
of corrupt learning, foul the faith of the upper 
classes, who now begin to wear their Christianity, 
not tossed for a crest high over their armor, l)ut 
stuck as a plaster over their sores, inside of their 
clothes. Then comes j^rinting, and universal gab- 
ble of fools ; gunpowder, and the end of all the 
noble methods of war.— /SY. Mark's Rest, p. 49. 



CHAPTER III. 

Women. 

A woman may always help her husband by what 
she knows, however little; by what she half-knows, 
or mis-knows, she will only teaze him. — /Sesame and 
Lilies, p. 88. 

For a long time I used to say, in all my element- 
ary books, that, except in a graceful and Jiiinor 
way, Avomen could not paint or draw. I am begin- 
ning, lately [1883], to bow myseif to the much more 
delightful conviction that nobody else can. — Art of 
England, jd. 15. 

The soul's aruior is never well sot to the heart 



CONDt/CT OF LIFli-WOMEX. 381 

unless a wunuiirs hand lias braced it ; and it is 
only when she braces it loosely that the honor of 
manhood fails. — Sesame and Lilies, p. 81. 

You fancy, perhaps, as you have been told so 
often, that a wife's rule should only be over her 
husband's house, not over his mind. Ah, no! the 
true rule is just the reverse of that ; a true wife, in 
her husbands house, is his servant; it is in his heart 
that she is queen. Whatever of the best he can 
conceive, it is her part to be ; whatever of highest 
he can hope, it is hers to promise ; all that is dark 
in him she must purge into purity ; all that is fail- 
ing in him she must strengthen into truth: from 
her, through all the world's clamor, he must win 
his praise; in her, through all the world's warfare, 
he must find his peace. — Crown, of Wild Olive, Lect. 
III., p. 02. 

Women's Wo.rk.— Then, for my meaning as to 
women's work, what should I mean, but sci-ubbing 
furniture, dusting walls, sweeping floors, making 
the beds, washing up the crockery, ditto the chil- 
dren, and whipping them when they want it, — 
mending their clothes, cooking their dinners, — and 
when there are cooks more than enough, helping 
with the farm work, or the garden, or the dairy? 
Is that plain speaking enough ? — Fors, IV., p. 375. 

The man's poAver is active, j^rogressive, de- 
fensive. He is eminently the doer, the creator, 
the discoverer, the defender. His intellect is for 
speculation and invention ; his energy for adven- 
ture, for war, and for conquest, wherever war 
is just, wherever conquest necessary. But the 
woman's power is for rule, not for battle, — and her 
intellect is not for invention or creation, but for 
sweet ordering, arrangement and decision. She sees 
the qualities of things, their claims and their places. 
Her great function is Praise: she enters into no 
contest, but infallibly judges the crown of contest. 
Bj' her office, and place, she is protected from all 
danger and temptation. The man, in his rough 
work in open world, must encounter all peril and 



882 A BUSKIN' ANTHOLOGY. 

trial :— to him, therefore, the failure, the offence, 
the inevitable error : often he must be wounded, 
or subdued, often misled, and always hardened. 
But he guards the woman from all this; within his 
house, as ruled by her, unless she herself has sougiit 
it, need enter no danger, no temptation, no cause 
of error or offence. This is the true nature of 
Home — it is the place of Peace ; the shelter, not 
only from all injury, but from all terror, doubt, 
and division. In so far as it is not this, it is not 
home : so far as the anxieties of the outer life j)ene- 
trate into it, and the inconsistently-minded, un- 
known, unloved, or hostile society of the outer 
world is allowed, by either husband or wife, to cross 
the threshold, it ceases to be home ; it is then only 
a part of that outer world which you have roofed 
over, and lighted fire in. But so far as it is a sacred 
place, a vestal temple, a temple of the hearth 
watched over by Household Gods, before whose 
faces none may come but those whom they can re- 
ceive with love, — so far as it is this, and roof and fire 
are types only of a nobler shade and light, — shade 
as of the rock in a weary land, and light as of the 
Pharos in the stormy sea; — so far it vindicates the 
name, and fulfils the praise, of home. 

And wherever a true wife comes, this home is 
always round her. The stars only may be over her 
head ; the glow-worm in the night-cold grass may 
be the only fire at her foot : but home is yet where- 
ever she is ; and for a noble woman it stretches far 
round her, better than ceiled with cedar, or painted 
with vei-milion, shedding its quiet light far, for 
those who else were homeless.— iSesame and Lilies, 
pp. 82, 83. 

The Public Duties of Women.— The man's 
duty, as a member of a commonwealth, is to assist in 
the maintenance, in the advance, in the defence of 
the State. The woman's duty, as a member of the 
commonwealth, is to assist in the oi-dering, in the 
comforting, and in the beautiful adornment of 
the State. What the man is at his own gate, 



CONDUCT OF LIFE— WOMEN. 383 

defending it, if need be, against insult and spoil, 
that also, not in a less, but in a more devoted meas- 
ure, lie is to be at the gate of his country, leaving 
Ills home, if need be, even to the spoiler, to do his 
more incumbent work there. And, in like manner, 
what the woman is to be within her gates, as the 
centre of order, the balm of distress, and the mirror 
of beauty ; that she is also to be without her gates, 
where order is more difficult, distress more im- 
minent, loveliness more rare. — Sesame and Lilies, 
p. 95. 

Woman's Power if she but realized it.— I am 
surjDrised at no depths to which, Avhen once warped 
from its honor, humanity can be degraded. . . . But 
this is wonderful to me— oh, how Avonderful ! — to see 
the tender and delicate woman among you, Avith 
her child at her breast, and a power, if she would 
wield it, over it, and over its father, purer than the 
air of heaven, and stronger than the seas of earth 
— nay, a magnitude of blessing Avhich her husband 
would not part with for all that earth itself, though 
it were made of one entire and perfect chrysolite: — 
to see her abdicate this majesty to play at prece- 
dence with her next-door neighbor ! This is wonder- 
ful — oh, wonderful I — to see her, with every innocent 
feeling fresh within her, go out in the morning into 
her garden to play with the fringes of its guarded 
flowers, and lift their heads when they are droop- 
ing, with her happy smile upon her face, and no 
cloud upon her brow, because there is a little wall 
around her place of peace : and yet she knows, in 
her heart, if she would only look for its knowledge, 
that, outside of that little rose-covered wall, the 
wild grass, to the horizon, is torn up by the agony 
of men, and beat level by the drift of their life- 
blood. — Sesame and Lilies, pp. 1)8, 99. 

AVoMEN AND THEIR LovERS.— Believe me, the 
whole course and character of your lovers' lives is 
in your hands; what you would have them be, they 
shall be, if you not only desire to have them so, but 
deserve to have them so ; for they are but mirrors 



364 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

ill which you Avill see yourselves iumged. If you 
are frivolous, they will be so also ; if you have no 
understanding of the scope of their duty, they also 
will forget it ; they will listen — they can listen— to 
no other interpretation of it than that uttered from 
your lips. Bid them be brave, they will be brave 
for you ; bid them be cowards, and, how noble so- 
ever they be, they will quail for you. Bid them be 
wise, and they will be wise for you ; mock at their 
counsel, they will be fools for you : such and so 
absolute is your rule over them. — Crown of Wild 
Olive, Lect. III., p. 92. 

Women's Dress. — A queen may dress like a wait- 
ing-maid, — perhaps succeed, if she chooses, in pass- 
ing for one ; but she will not, therefore, be vulgar ; 
nay, a waiting-maid may dress like a queen, and 
jaretend to be one, and yet need not be vulgar, 
unless there is inherent vulgarity in her. — Modern 
Painters, V., p. 291. 

You ladies like to lead the fashion : — by all means 
lead it : lead it thoroughly, lead it far enough. 
Dress yourselves nicely, and dress everybody else 
nicely. Lead i\\e fashions for the poor first ; make 
them look well, and you yourselves will look, in 
ways of which you have now no conception, all the 
better. The fashions you have set for some time 
among your peasantry are not pretty ones ; their 
doublets are too irregularly slashed, and the wind 
blows too frankly through them. — Crown of Wild 
Olive, Lect. I., p. 22. 

For literal truth of your jewels themselves, ab- 
solutely search out and cast away all manner of 
false, or dyed, or altered stones. And at present, to 
make quite sure, wear your jewels uncut : they 
will be twenty times more interesting to you, so. 
The ruby in the British crown is uncut; and is, as 
far as my knowledge extends — I have not had it to 
look at close— the loveliest precious stone in the 
world. . . . And as you are true in the choosing, 
be just in the sharing, of your jewels. They are 
but dross and dust after all ; and you, my sweet 



CONDUCT OF LIFE—WOMEX. 385 

religious friends, who are so anxious to inijoart to 
the poor your pearls of gi'eat price, may surely also 
share with them your pearls of little price. — Deuca- 
lion, p. 86. 

It would be strange, if at any great assembly 
which, while it dazzled the young and the thought- 
less, beguiled the gentler hearts that beat 1)eneath 
the embroidei-y, with a placid sensation of luxurious 
benevolence — as if by all that they wore in way- 
wardness of beauty, comfort had been first given to 
the distressed, and aid to the indigent ; it would be 
strange, I say, if, for a moment, the sjairits of Truth 
and of Terror, which walk invisibly among the 
masques of the earth, would lift the dimness from 
our erring thoughts, and show us how (inasmuch 
as the sums exhausted for that magiiilicence would 
have given back the failing breath to many an un- 
sheltered outcast on moor and street) they who wear 
it have literally entered into partnership with 
Death, and dressed themselves in his spoils. Yes, if 
the veil could be lifted not only from your thoughts, 
but from your human sight, you would see— the 
angels do see — on those gay Avhite dresses of yours, 
strange dark sjDots, and crimson patterns that you 
knew not of — sjiots of the inextinguishable red that 
all the seas cannot wash away ; yes, and among 
the i^leasant flowers that crown your fair heads, 
and glow on your wreathed hair, you would see 
that one weed was always twisted which no one 
thought of — the grass that grows on graves. — A Joy 
For Ever, p. 38. 

Women usually apologize to themselves for their 
pride and vanity, by saying, " It is good for trade." 
Now you may soon convince yourself, and every- 
body about you, of the monstrous folly of this, by 
a very simple piece of definite action. Wear, your- 
self, becoming, pleasantly varied, but simple dress, 
of the best possible material. What you think 
necessary to buy (beyond this) " for the good of 
trade," buy, and immediately hum. Even your 
dullest friends will see the folly of that proceeding. 



386 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

You can then explain to them that by wearing 
wliat tliey don't want (instead of burning it) for the 
good of trade, they are merely adding insolence 
and vulgarity to absurdity.— i^ors, II., p. 157. 



WOMEN AND RELIGION. 

Theology a dangerous Science for Women. — 
There is one dangerous science for women — one 
which let them indeed beware how they profanely 
touch— that of theology. Strange, and miserably 
strange, that while they are modest enough to 
doubt their powers, and pause at the threshold 
of sciences whei-e every step is demonstrable and 
sure, they will plunge headlong, and without one 
thought of incompetency, into that science in which 
the greatest men have trembled, and the wisest 
erred. — Sesame and Lilies, p. 87. 

Women and the Bible. — You women of England 
are all now shrieking with one voice— you and your 
clergymen together — because you hear of your 
Bibles being attacked. If you choose to obey your 
Bibles, you will never care who attacks them. It 
is just because you never fulfil a single downright 
precept of the Book, that you are so careful for its 
credit : and just because you don't care to obey its 
Avhole words, that you are so particular about 
the letters of them. The Bible tells you to dress 
plainly,— and you are mad for finery ; the Bible 
tells you to have pity on the poor, — and you crush 
them under your carriage-wheels ; the Bible tells 
you to do judgment and justice, — and you do not 
know, nor care to know, so much as what the Bible 
word " justice " means.— Croton of Wild Olive, Lect. 
III., p. 93. 

Sisters of Charity. — I am frightened out of my 
wits, every noAV and then, here at Oxford, by seeing 
something come out of poor people's houses, all 
dressed in black down to the ground ; which, 
(having been much thinking of wicked things 



CONDUCT OF LIFE— WOMEN. 387 

lately,) I at first take for the Devil, and then find, 
to my extreme relief and gratification, that it's a 
Sister of Charity.— i^or*', I., p. 325. 

I know well how good the Sisters of Charity are, 
and how much we owe to them ; but all these pro- 
fessional pieties (except so far as distinction or asso- 
ciation may be nece.ssary for effectiveness of work) 
are in their spirit wrong, and in practice merely 
plaster the sores of disease that ought never have 
been perniitted to exist ; encouraging at the same 
time the herd of less excellent women in frivolity, 
by leading them to think that they must either be 
good up to the black standard, or cannot be good 
for anything. Wear a costume, by all means, if 
you like; but let it be a cheerful and becoming one; 
and be in your heart a Sister of Charity always, 
without either veiled or voluble declaration of it. — 
Sesame and Lilies, Preface of 1871, p. 14. 

The PA.SSION of Christ.— When any you of next 
go abroad, observe, and consider the meaning of, 
the sculptures and paintings, Avhich of every rank 
in art, and in every chapel and cathedral, and by 
every mountain path, recall the hours, and repre- 
sent the agonies, of the Passion of Christ : and try 
to form some estimate of the efforts that have been 
made by the four arts of eloquence, music, painting, 
and sculpture, since the twelfth century, to wring 
out of the hearts of women the last drops of pity 
that could be excited for this merely physical agony: 
for the art nearly always dwells on the physical 
wounds or exhaustion chiefly, and degrades, far 
more than it animates, the conception of pain. 

Then try to conceive the quantity of time, and of 
excited and thrilling emotion, which have been 
wasted by the tender and delicate women of Chris- 
tendom, during these last six hundred years, in thus 
picturing to themselves, under the influence of such 
imagery, the bodily pain, long since passed, of One 
Person;— which, so far as they indeed conceived it 
to be sustained by a Divine Nature, could not for 
that reason have been less endurable than the 



388 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

agonies of any simple liuman death by torture : 
and then try to estimate what might have been the 
better result, for the righteousness and felicity of 
mankind, if these same women had been taught the 
deep meaning of the last words that wei-e ever 
spoken by their Master to those who had ministered 
to Him of their substance: " Davighters of Jeru- 
salem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, 
and for your children." — Lectures on Art, p. 40. 

A Dinner-Party with Christ.— I wrotea lettei 
to one of my lady friends, who gives rather frequent 
dinners, the other day, which may perhaps be use- 
ful to others : it was to this effect mainly, though I 
add and alter a little to make it more general : — 

" You probably will be having a dinner-party to- 
day; now, please do this, and remember I am quite 
serious in what I ask you. We all of us, who have 
any belief in Christianity at all, wish that Christ 
were alive now. Suppose, then, that He is. I think 
it very likely that if He were in London you would be 
one of the people whom He Avould take some notice 
of. Now, suppose He has sent you word that He is 
coming to dine Avith you to-day ; but that you are 
not to make any change in your guests on His ac- 
count; that He wants to meet exactly the party you 
have, and no other. Suppose you have just received 
this message, and that St. John has also left woril, 
in passing, with tlie butler, that his ujaster will 
come alone ; so that you won't have any trouble 
with the Apostles. Now, this is what I Avant you to 
do. First, determine what you will have for dinner. 
You are not ordered, observe, to make no changes 
in your bill of fare. Take a piece of paper, and ab- 
solutely write fresh orders to your cook, — you can't 
realize the thing enough Avithout writing. Tliat 
done, consider hoAv you AVill arrange your guests 
— who is to sit next Christ on the other side — Avho 
opposite, and so on ; finally, consider a little AA'hat 
you AA'ill talk about, supposing, which is just possi- 
ble, that Christ should tell you to go on talking as 
if He were not there, and never to mind Hiin. Yon 



CONDUCT OF LIFE— WOMEN. 389 

couldu't, you will tell lue ? Then, my dear lady, 
how t-au you in general ? Uon't you i^rofess— nay, 
don't you much more than profess— to believe that 
Christ is always there, Avhether you see Him or not ? 
AVhy should the seeing make such a difference ? "— 
Fors, II., p. 283. 



GIRLS. 

At no period, so far as I am able to gather by the 
most careful comparison of existing portraiture, 
has there ever been a loveliness so variably refined, 
so modestly and kindly virtuous, so innocently fan- 
tastic, and so daintily pure, as the i^resent girl- 
beauty of our British Islands.— J.r^ of England, 
p. 87. 

A young lady sang to me a Miss Somebody's 
"great song," Live, and Love, and Die. Had it 
been written for nothing better than silkworms, it 
should at least have added— Spin. — Fiction, Fair 
and Foul, p. 19. 

If there were to be any difference between a girl's 
education and a boy's, I should say that of the two 
the girl should be earlier led — as her intellect ripens 
faster — into deep and serious subjects ; and that 
her range of literature should be, not more, but 
less frivolous, calculated to add the qualities of 
patience and seriousness to her natural poignancy 
of thought and quickness of wit; and also to keep 
her in a lofty and pure element of thought. — Sesame 
and Lilies, p. 88. 

Thkir first Virtue is to be happy. — The first 
virtue of girls is to be intensely happy;— so hapi^y 
that they don't know what to do with themselves 
for happiness, — and dance, instead of walking. 
Don't you recollect, 

" No fountain from a rocky cave 
E'er tripped witlx foot so free; 
Slie seemed as luippy as a wave 
Tliat dances on the sea." 

A girl is alwaj'S like that, when everything's right 
with her.— Mhics of the Dust, p. 85. 



390 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

Cinderella and Virtue. — In the play, Cinder- 
ella makes herself generally useful, and sweeps the 
doorstep, and dusts the door;— and none of the au- 
dience think any the Avorse of her on that acdount. 
They think the worse of her proud sisters who make 
her do it. But when they leave the Circus, they 
never think for a moment of making themselves 
useful, like Cinderella. They forthwith play the 
proud sisters as much as they can; and try to make 
anybody'else, who will, sweep their doorsteps. Also, 
nobody advises Cinderella to write novels, instead 
of doing her washing, by way of bettering herself. 
The audience, gentle and simple, feel that the only 
chance she has of pleasing her Godmother, or mar- 
rying a Prince, is in remaining patiently at her tub, 
as long as the Fates will have it so, heavy though it 
he.—Fors, II., p. 100. 

Girls Reading the Bible.— You may see con- 
tinually girls who have never been taught to do a 
single useful thing thoroughly; who cannot sew, 
who cannot cook, who cannot cast an account, nor 
prepare a medicine, whose whole life has been passed 
either in i^lay or in pride; you will find girls like 
these when they are earnest-hearted, cast all their 
innate passion of religious spirit, which was meant 
by God to support them through the iiksomeness 
of daily toil, into grievous and vain meditation 
over the meaning of the great Book, of which no 
syllable was ever yet to be understood but through 
a deed; all the instinctive wisdom and mercy of 
their womanhood made vain, and the glory of their 
pure consciences Avarped into fruitless agony con- 
cerning questions which the laws of common ser- 
viceable life would have either solved for them in 
an instant, or kept out of their way. Give such a 
girl any true work that will make her active in the 
dawn, and weary at night, with the consciousness 
that her fellow-creatures have indeed been the bet- 
ter for her day, and the powerless sorrow of her 
enthusiasm will transform itself into a majesty of 
radiant and beneficent peace. — Mystery of Life, 
p. 133. 



COt^BUGT OF LIFE— WOMEN. 391 

Cooking. — Oookiiifj; means the knoAvIedge of Me- 
dea, and of Circe, and of Calypso, and of Helen, 
and of Rebekah, and of the Qtieen of Sheba. It 
means the knowledge of all herbs, and fruits, and 
balms, and spices; and of all that is healing and 
sweet in fields and groves, and savory in meats; it 
means carefulness, and inventiveness, and watch- 
fulness, and willingness, and readiness of appliance; 
it means the economy of your great-grandmothers, 
and the science of modern chemists; it means much 
tasting, and no wasting; it means English thorough- 
ness, and French art, and Arabian hospitality; and 
it means, in fine, that you are to be perfectly and 
always, ladies — "• loaf-givers;" and, as you are to 
see, imperatively, that everybody has something 
Ijretty to put on, — so you are to see, yet more im- 
peratively, that everybody has something nice to 
eat. — Ethics of the Dust, p. 87. 

A Dialogue on SEv>a:,'G axd Dress-makixg.— 

L. — What do you think the beautiful word wife 
comes from ? 

Dora. — I don't think it is a particularly beautiful 
woi'd. 

-Zi.— Perhaps not. At your ages you may think 
hride sounds better; but wife is the word for wear, 
dejjend upon it. It is the great word in which the 
English and Latin languages conquer the French 
and the Grreek. I hope the French will some day 
get a word for it, yet, instead of their dreadful 
femme. But what do you think it comes from ? 

Dora.— I never did think about it. 

X.— Nor you, Sibyl? 

^ibyl.—l^o; I thought it was Saxon and stopped 
there. 

X.— Yes; but the great good of Saxon words is, 
that they usually do mean something. Wife means 
" weaver." You have all the right to call yourselves 
little ''housewives," when you sew nea.tly. —M7iics 
of the Dust, p. 121. 

Dora.— Then, we are all to learn dress-making, 
are we ? 



392 A EUSKIN ANTHOLOGT. 

L. — Yes; and always to dress yourselves beautiful- 
ly — not finely, unless on occasion; but then very 
finely and beautifully too. Also, you are to dress 
as many other people as you can; and to teach 
them how to dress, if they don't know; and to con- 
sider every ill-dressed woman or child whom j^ou 
see anywhere, as a personal disgrace; and to get 
at them, somehow, until everybody is as beauti- 
fully dressed as birds. — Ethics of the Bust, p. 87. 

Bits of Work for Girls —Early rising— on all 
grounds — is for yourself indispensable. You must 
be at work by latest at six in summer and seven in 
winter. (Of course that iDuts an end to evening 
parties, and so it is a blessed condition in two direc- 
tions at once.) Every day do a little bit of house- 
maid's work in your oAvn house, thoroughlj^ so as 
to be a pattern of perfection in that kind. Your 
actual housemaid will then follow your lead, if 
there's an atom of woman's spirit in her — (if not, 
ask your mother to get another). Take a step or 
two of stair, and a corner of the dining-room, and 
keep them i)olished like bits of a Dutch picture. 

If you have a garden, spend all spare minutes in 
it in actual gardening. If not, get leave to take 
care of part of some friend's, a j^oor person's, but 
always out of doors. Have nothing to do with green- 
houses, still less with hothouses. 

When thei-e are no flowers to be looked after, 
there are dead leaves to be gathered, snow to be 
swept, or matting to be nailed, and the \\\s.e.—Fors, 
II., p. 97. 

Gardening for Girls.— .F/r^'^.— The primal ob- 
ject of your gardening, for yourself, is to keep you 
at work in the open air, whenever it is possible. 
The greenhouse will always be a refuge to you from 
the wind; which, on the contrary, you ought to be 
able to bear; and will tempt you into clippings and 
pottings and pettings, and mere standing dilettan- 
tism in a damp and over-scented room, instead of 
true labor in fresh air. 

Secondly.— It will not only itself involve unneces- 



CONDUCT OF LIFE— WOMEN. 393 

sary expense — (for the greenhouse is sure to turn 
into a hothouse in the end; and even if not, is al- 
ways having its panes broken, or its bhnds going 
wrong, or its stands getting rickety); but it will 
tempt you into buying nursery plants, and waste 
your time in anxiety about them. 

Thirdly. — The use of your garden to the house- 
hold ought to be mainly in the vegetables you can 
raise in it. And, for these, your proper observance 
of season, and of the authority of the stars, is a vital 
duty. Every climate gives its vegetable food to its 
living creatures at the right time; your business is 
to know that time, and be prepared for it, and to 
take the healthy luxury which nature appoints you, 
in the rare annual taste of the thing given in those 
its due days. The vile and gluttonous modern 
habit of forcing never allows people properly to 
taste anything. 

Lastly, and chiefly. — Your garden is to enable 
you to obtain such knowledge of plants as you may 
best use in the country in which you live, by com- 
municating it to others; and teaching them to take 
pleasure in the green herb, given for meat, and the 
colored flower, given for joy. And your business is 
not to make the greenhouse or hothouse rejoice and 
blossom like the rose, but the wilderness and solitary 
place. And it is, therefore, not at all of camellias 
and air-plants that the devil is afraid ; on the con- 
trary, the Dame aux Camellias is a very especial 
servant of Wi^.—Fors, II., p. 284. 

Idleness and Cruelty in Girls.— How many 
soever you may find or fancy your faults to be, 
there are only two that ai-e of real consequence, 
—Idleness and Cruelty. Perhaps you may be 
proud. Well, we can get much good out of pride, 
if only it be not religious. Perhaps you may be 
vain : it is highly probable ; and very pleasant for 
the people who like to praise you. Perhaps you 
are a little envious : that is really very shocking ; 
but then — so is everybody else. Perhaps, also, you 
are a little malicious, which I am truly concerned 



394 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

to hear, but should probably only the more, if I 
knew you, enjoy your conversation. But whatever 
else you may be, you must not be useless, and you 
must not be cruel. If there is any one point which, 
in six thousand years of thinking about right and 
wrong, wise and good men have agreed upon, or 
successively by experience discovered, it is that 
God dislikes idle and cruel people more than any 
other; — that Ilis first order is, "Work while you 
have light;" and His second, "Be merciful while 
you have mercy," — Sesame and Lilies, Vreiixce, 1871, 
p. 81. 

Vanity rebuked. — First, be quite sure of one 
thing, that, however much you may know, and 
whatever advantages you may possess, and however 
good you may be, you have not been singled out, 
by the God who made you, from all the other girls 
in the world, to be especially informed respecting 
His own nature and character. You have not been 
born in a luminoiis point upon the surface of the 
globe, where a perfect theology might be expounded 
to you from your youth up, and where everything 
you were taught would be true, and everything that 
was enforced upon you, right. Of all the insolent, 
all the foolish persuasions that by any chance 
could enter and hold your empty little heart, this 
is the proudest and foolishest, — that you have been 
so much the darling of the Heavens, and favorite 
of the Fates, as to lie born in the very nick of time, 
and in the punctual place, when and where pure 
Divine truth had been sifted from the errors of the 
Nations ; and that your papa had been providen- 
tially disposed to buy a house in the convenient 
neighborhood of the steeple under which that 
immaculate and final verity would be beautifully 
pi'oclaimed. Do not think it, child ; it is not so. 
This, on the contrary, is the fact, — unpleasant you 
may think it ; pleasant, it seems to me, — that you, 
with all your pretty dressses, and dainty looks, 
and kindly thoughts, and saintly aspirations, are 
not one Avhitmore thought of or loved by the great 



CONDUCT OF LIFE— women: 395 

Maker and Master than any poor little red. black, 
or blue savage, running wild in the pestilent woods, 
or naked on the hot sands of the earth : and that, 
of the two, you pi'obably know less about God 
than she does ; the only difference being that she 
thinks little of Him that is right, and you, njuch that 
is yfYon^.— Sesame and Lilies, Preface, 1871, p. 6. 

The two Mirrors.— I do not doubt but that the 
mind is a less pleasant thing to look at than the 
face, and for that very reason it needs more looking 
at ; so always have two mirrors on your toilet 
table, and see that Avith proper care you dress body 
and mind before them daily. After the dressing is 
once over for the day, think no more about it: as 
your hair will blow about your ears, so your temper 
and thoughts will get ruffled with the day's work, 
and may need, sometimes, twice dressing ; but I 
don't want you to carry about a mental pocket- 
comb ; only to be smooth braided alwaj^s in the 
morning. — Sesame and Lilies, Preface, 1871, jj. 9. 

An Engraving op the Cross of Christ.— This 
engraving represents a young lady in a very long 
and, though plain, very becoming white dress, 
tossed upon the waves of a terrifically stormy sea, 
by which neither her hair nor her becoming dress 
is in the least wetted ; and saved from despair in 
that situation by closely embracing a very thick 
and solid stone Cross. By which far-sought and 
orginal metaphor young ladies are expected, after 
some effort, to understand the recourse they may 
have, for support, to the Cross of Christ, in the 
midst of the troubles of this world. 

As those troubles are for the present, in all prob- 
ability, limited to the occasional loss of their thim- 
bles Avhen they have not taken care to put them 
into their workboxes, — the concern they feel at the 
unsympathizing gaiety of their companions, — or 
perhaps the disappointment at not hearing a favor- 
ite clergyman preach, — (for I will not suppose the 
young ladies interested in this picture to be affected 
by any chargin at the loss of an invitation to a 



39G A RUSKIN AKTHOLOOY. 

ball, or tlie like worldliness,) — it seems to me the 
.stress of such calamities might be represented, in a 
picture, by less appalling imagery. And I can as- 
sure my fair little hidy friends, — if I still have any, 
— that whatever a young girl's ordinary troubles 
or annoyances may be, her true virtue is in shak- 
ing them olY, as a rose-leaf shakes oft' rain, and 
remaining debonnaire and bright in spirits, or even, 
as the rose would be, the brighter for the troubles ; 
and not at all in allowing herself to be either drifted 
or depressed to the point of requiring religious con- 
solation. — Ariadne, p. 18. 

On the Education of Girls.— Keep the modern 
magazine and novel out of your girl's way: turn 
her loose into the old library every wet day, and let 
her alone. She will lind Avhat is good for her; you 
cannot: for there is just this difference between the 
making of a girl's character and a boy's — you may 
chisel a boy into shape, as you would a rock, or 
hammer him into it, if he be of a better kind, as 
you would a piece of bronze. But you cannot 
hammer a girl into anything. She grows as a flow- 
er does, — she will wither without sun; she will de- 
cay in her sheath, as the narcissus does, if you do 
not give her air enough; she may fall, and defile 
her head in dust, if you leave her without help at 
sonje moments of her life; but you cannot fetter 
her; she must take her own fair form and Wciy, if 
she take any, and in mind as in body, must have 
always 

" Her honscliokl iiiotions light and free 
And steps of vii'gln liberty." 

— Sesame and Lilies, p. 90. 

All such knowledge should be given her as may 
enable her to understand, and even to aid, the work 
of men: and yet it should be given, not as knoM'l- 
edge, — not as if it were, or could be, for her an ob- 
ject to know; but only to feel, and to judge. It is 
of no moment, as a matter of pride or perfectness 
in herself, whether she knows many languages or 
one; but it is of the utmost, that she should be able 



CONDUCT OF LIFE— WOMEN. 397 

to show kindness to a stranger, and to understand 
the sweetness of a stranger's tongue. It is of no 
moment to her own worth or dignity that she 
should be acquainted with this science or that; but 
it is of tlie highest that she should be trained in 
habits of accurate thought ; that she should un- 
derstand the meaning, the inevitableness, and the 
loveliness of natural laws, and follow at least some 
one path of scientific attainment, as far as to the 
threshold of that bitter Valley of Humiliation, into 
which only the wasest and bravest of men can de- 
scend, owning themselves forever children, gather- 
ing pebbles on a boundless shore. It is of little 
consequence how many positions of cities she knows, 
or how many dates of events, or how many names 
of celebrated persons — it is not the object of educa- 
tion to turn a woman into a dictionary; but it is 
deeply necessary that she should be taught to enter 
with her Avhole personality into the history she 
reads; to picture the passages of it vitally in her 
own bright imagination; to apiorehend, with her fine 
instincts, the pathetic circumstances and dramatic 
relations, which the historian too often only 
eclipses by his reasoning, and disconnects by his 
arrangement: it is for her to trace the hidden equities 
of divine reward, and catch sight through the dark- 
ness, of the fateful threads of Avoven fire that con- 
nect error with its retribution. But, chiefly of all. 
she is to be taught to extend the limits of her sym- 
pathy with respect to that history which is being 
for her determined, as the moments pass in which 
she draws her peaceful breath: and to the contem- 
porary calamity which, were it but rightly mourned 
by her, would recur no more hereafter. — Sesame 
ami LUies, pp. 86, 87. 

Two AMERicAJf Girls in Italy.— I had to go to 
Verona by the afternoon train. In the carriage 
with me were two American girls with their father 
and mother, people of the class which has lately 
made so much money suddenly, and does not know 
what to do with it : and these two girls, of about 



393 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

fifteen and eighteen, had evidently been indulged 
in everything, (since they had had the means,) 
which western civilization could imagine. And 
here they were, specimens of the utmost which the 
money and invention of the nineteenth century 
could produce in maidenhood, — children of its 
most progressive race, — enjoying the full advan- 
tages of political liberty, of enlightened philosophi- 
cal education, of cheap pilfered literature, and of 
luxury at any cost. Whatever money, machinery, 
or freedom of thought, could do for these two chil- 
dren, had been done. No superstition had de- 
ceived, no restraint degraded them:— types, they 
could not but be, of maidenly wisdom and felicity, 
as conceived by the forwardest intellects of our 
time. 

And they were travelling throiigh a district which, 
if any in the world, should touch the hearts and de- 
light the eyes of young girls. Between Venice and 
Vei'ona ! Portia's villa perhaps in sight upon the 
Brenta, — Juliet's tomb to be visited in the evening, — 
blue against the southern sky, the hills of Petrarch's 
home. Exquisite midsummer sunshine, with low 
rays, glanced through the vine-leaves; all the Alps 
were cl«far, from the lake of Garda to C adore, and 
to farthest Tyrol. What a princess's chamber, this, 
if these are princesses, and what dreams might 
they not dream , therein ! 

But the two American girls were neither prin- 
cesses, nor seers, nor dreamers. By infinite self-in- 
dulgence, they had reduced themselves simply to 
two pieces of white putty that could feel pain. The 
flies and dust stuck to them as to clay, ?bnd they 
perceived, between Venice and Verona, nothing 
but the flies and the dust. They pulled down the 
blinds the moment they entered the carriage, and 
then sprawled, and writhed, and tossed among the 
cushions of it, in vain contest, during the whole 
fifty miles, with every miserable sensation of bodily 
affliction that could make time intolerable. They 
Avere dressed in thin white frocks, coming vaguely 
open at the backs as they stretched or wriggled; 



CONDUCT OF LIFE-WOMEN. 399 

they had French novels, lemons, and lumps of 
sugar, to beguile their state with; the novels hang- 
ing together by the ends of string that had once 
stiched them, or adhering at the corners in densely 
bruised dog's-ears, out of which the girls, wetting 
their fingers, occasionally extricated a gluey leaf. 
From time to time they cut a lemon open, ground 
a lump of sugar backwards and forwards over it 
till every fibre was in a treacly pulp; then sucked 
the pulp, and gnawed the white skin into leathery 
strings for the sake of its bitter. Only one sentence 
was exchanged, in the fifty miles, on the subject of 
things outside the carriage (the Alps being once vis- 
ible from a station where they had drawn up the 
blinds). 

" Don't those snow-caps make you cool ?" 

" No — I wisli they did." 

And so they went their way, with sealed eyes and 
tormented limbs, their numbered miles of pain.— 
Fors, I., pp. 269, 370. 

Carpaccio's Princess.— In the year 1869, just 
before leaving Venice, I liad been carefully looking 
at a picture by Victor Carpaccio, representing the 
dream of a young pi'incess. Carpaccio lias taken 
nuich pains to explain to us, as far as he can, the 
kind of life she leads, by completely painting her 
little bedroom in the light of dawn, so that you can 
see everything in it. It is lighted by two doubly- 
arched windows, the arches being painted crimson 
round their edges, and the capitals of the shafts 
that bear them, gilded. They are filled at the top 
with small round panes of glass ; but beneath, are 
open to the blue morning sky, with a low lattice 
across them ; and in the one at the back of the 
room are set two beautiful white Greek vases with 
a plant in each; one having rich dark and pointed 
green leaves, the other crimson flowers, but not of 
any species known to me, each at the end of a 
branch like a spray of heath. 

These flower-i^ots stand on a shelf which runs all 
round the room, and beneath the window, at about 



400 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

the height of the elbow, and serves to put things 
on anywhere : beneath it, down to the floor, the 
walls are covered with green cloth ; but above, are 
bare and white. The second windoAv is nearly 
opposite the bed, and in front of it is the princess's 
reading-table, some two feet and a half square, 
covered by a red cloth Avith a white border and 
dainty fringe : and beside it her seat, not at all like 
a reading chair in Oxford, but a very small three- 
legged stool like a music-stool, covered with crim- 
son cloth. On the table are a book set up at a 
slope fittest for reading, and an hour-glass. Under 
the shelf, near the table, so as to be easily reached 
by the outstretched arm, is a press full of books. 
The door of this has been left open, and the books, 
I am grieved to say, are rather in disorder, having 
been pulled about before the i^rincess went to bed, 
and one left standing on its side. 

Ojiposite this window, on the white wall, is a small 
shrine or picture (I can't see which, for it is in sharp 
retiring perspective), with a lami^ before it, and a 
silver vessel hung from the lamp, looking like one 
for holding incense. 

The bed is a broad four-poster, the posts being 
beautifully wrought golden or gilded rods, variously 
wreathed and branched, carrying a canopy of warm 
red. The princess's shield is at the head of it, and 
the feet are raised entirely above the floor of the 
room, on a dais which projects at the lower end so 
as to form a seat, on which the child has laid her 
crown. Her little blue slippers lie at the side of the 
bed, — her white dog beside them. The coverlid is 
scarlet, the white sheet covered half way back over 
it ; the young girl lies straight, bending neither at 
waist nor knee, the sheet rising and falling over her 
in a narrow unbroken Avave, like the shape of the 
coverlid of the last sleep, when the turf scarcely 
rises. 

She is some seventeen or eighteen years old, 
her head is turned towards us on the pilloM', the 
cheek resting on her hand, as if she Avere thinking, 
yet utterly calm in sleep, and almost colorless- 



CONDUCT OF LIFE— WOMEN. 4=01 

Her hair is tied with a narrow riband, and divided 
into two wreaths, which encircle her head like a 
double crown. The white nightgown hides the 
arm raised on the pillow, down to the wrist. 

At the door of the room an angel enters ; (the lit- 
tle dog, though Ijang awake, vigilant, takes no 
notice.) He is a very small angel, his head just 
rises a little above the shelf round the room, and 
Avoiild only reach as high as the princess's chin, if 
she were standing up. He has soft gray wings, 
lustreless ; and his dress of subdued blue, has violet 
sleeves, open above the elbow, and showing white 
sleeves below. He comes in Avithout haste, his 
body, like a mortal one, casting shadow from the 
light through the door behind, his face perfectly 
quiet; a palm-branch in his right hand— a scroll in 
his left. 

So dreams the princess, with blessed eyes, that 
need no earthly dawn. It is very pretty of Car- 
paccio to make her dream out the angel's dress so 
particularly, and notice the slashed sleeves ; and 
to dream so little an angel — very nearly a doll angel, 
— bringing her the branch of palm, and message. 
But the lovely characteristic of all is the evident 
delight of her continual life. Royal power over her- 
self, and happiness in her flowers, her books, her 
sleeping and waking, her praj-ers, her dreams, her 
earth, her heaven. . . . 

" How do I know the princess is industrious? " 

Partly by the trim state of her room, — by the 
hour-glass on the table, — by the evident use of all 
the books she has, (well bound, every one of them, 
in stoutest leather or velvet, and Avith no dog's- 
ears), but more distinctly from another picture of 
her, not asleep. In that one, a prince of England 
has sent to ask her in marriage: and her father, lit- 
tle liking to part with her, sends for her to his 
room to ask her what she would do. He sits, moody 
and sorrowful; she, standing before him in a plain 
housewifely di-ess, talks quietly, going on with her 
needlework all the time. 

A work-woiuan, friends, she, no less than a prin. 



402 A HUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

cess; and princess most in being so.* — Fors, I., pp. 
267-271. 

Courtship.— When a youth is fully in love with 
a gii'l, and feels that he is wise in loving her, he 
should at once tell her so plainly, and take his 
chance bravely, with other suitors. No lover should 
have the insolence to think of being accepted at 
once, nor should any girl have the cruelty to refuse 
at once ; without severe reasons. If she simply 
doesn't like him, she may send him away for seven 
years or so — he vowing to live on cresses, and wear 
sackcloth meanwhile, or the like penance : if she 
likes him a little, or thinks she might come to like 
him in time, she may let him stay near her, jiutting 
him always on sharp trial to see Avhat stuff he is 
made of, and requiring, figuratively, as many lion- 
skins or giants' heads as she thinks herself worth. 
The whole meaning and power of true courtshii^ is 
Probation; and it oughtn't to be shorter than three 
years at least, — seven is, to my own mind, the ortho- 
dox time. And these relations between the young- 
people should be openly and simply known, not to 
their friends only, but to everybody who has the 
least interest in them : and a girl Avorth anything 
ought to have always half a dozen or so of suitors 
under vow for her. — Fors, IV., p. 321. 

* To my great satisfaction,.! am asked by a pleasant corre- 
spondent, where and what the picture of the Princess's Dream 
is. High np, in an out-of-the-M-ay corner of tlie Academy of 
Venice, seen by no man— nor woman neither,— of all pictures ni 
Knrope the one I should choose for a gift, if a fairy queen gave 
me choice,— Victor Carpaccio's " Vision of St. Ursula,"— Fors, 
11., p. 189. 

I have to correct a mistake in Fors, which it will be great de- 
light to all Amorites to discover; namely, that the Princess, 
whom I judged to be industrious because she went on working 
while she talked to her father about her marriage, cannot, on 
this ground, be praised beyond Princesses in general ; for, in- 
deed, the little mischief, instead of working, as I thought,— 
while her father is leaning his head on his hand in the greatest 
distress at the thought of parting with her,— is trying on her 
marriage-ring \—Furs, IH., p. 318. 



\;C! 



CONDUCT OF LIFE—" THE MOUy 403 



CHAPTER IV. 

" The Mob." 

Positive in a pertinent and practical manner, I 
have been, and shall be; with such stern and steady 
wedge of fact and act as time may let nie drive into 
the gnarled blockheadism of the British mob. — 
Fors, II., p. 131. 

The Minotaur has a man's body, a bull's head 
(which is precisely the general type of the English 
nation to-day). — Fors, I., p. 331. 

The word " manly " has come to mean xiractically, 
among us, a schoolboy's character, not a. man's. 
We ai'e, at our best, thoughtlessly impetuous, fond 
of adventure and excitement; curious in knowledge 
for its novelty, not for its system and results; faith- 
ful and affectionate to those among whom we are 
by chance cast, but gently and calmly insolent to 
strangers; we are stupidly conscientious, and in- 
stinctively brave, and always ready to cast away 
the lives we take no pains to make valuable, in 
causes of which we have never ascertained the jus- 
tice. — Athena, p. 144. 

Men called King Richard I. " Lion-heart," not un- 
truly; and the English, as a people, have prided 
themselves somewhat ev^er since on having, every 
man of them, the heai'tof a lion; without inquiring 
particularly either what sort of a heart a lion has, 
or whether to have the heart of a lanjb might not 
sometimes be more to the purpose. — Fors, I., p. 36. 

Dickens is said to have made people good-natured. 
If he did, I wonder what sort of natures they had 
before! Thackeray is similarly asserted to have 
chastised and repressed flunkeydom — which it 
greatly puzzles me to hear, because, as far as I can 
see, there isn't a carriage now left in all the Row 



404 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

with anybody sitting inside it : the people who 
ought to have been in it are, every one, lianging on 
behind, the carriage in front. — Fors, II., p. 30. 

If the British public were informed that engineers 
were now confident, after their practice in the 
Cenis and St. Gotliard tunnels, that they could 
make a railway to Hell — the British public Avould 
instantly invest in the concern to any amount; 
and stop church-bnilding all over the country, 
for fear of diminishing the dividends. — Fors, II., 
p. 302. 

In recent days, it is fast becoming the only defini- 
tion of aristocracy, that tlie principal business of its 
life is the killing of sparrows. Sparrows, or pigeons, 
or partridges, what does it matter? "Centum 
mille, perdrices plumbo confecit ; " that is, indeed, 
too often the sum of the life of an English lord ; 
much questionable now, if indeed of more value 
than that of many sparrows. — Love's Meinie, p. G. 

As to our not massacring cliildren, it is true that 
an English gentleman will not now himself will- 
ingly put a knife into the throat either of a child 
or a lamb; but he will kill any quantity of children 
by disease in order to increase his rents, as uncon- 
cernedly as he, will eat any quantity of mutton. — 
Val D'Arno, p. 115. 

The Destruction op Landscape by the Brit- 
ish Philistines.— You might liave the rivers of 
England as pure as the crystal of the rock ; — 
beautiful in falls, in lakes, in living pools ;— so full 
of fish that you might take them out witli your 
hands instead of nets. Or you may do always as 
you have done now, turn every river of England into 
a common sewer, so that you cannot so much as 
baptize an English baby but with filth, unless you 
hold its face out in the rain ; and even that falls 
dirty.— i^or*', I., p. 69. 

You think it a great triumph to make the sun 
draw brown landscapes for you. That Avas also a 
discovery, and some day may be useful. But the 



CONDUCT OF LIFK-'' THE MOB.'' 403 

sun had drawn landscapes before for you, not in 
brown, but in green, and blue, and all imaginable 
colors, here in England. Not one of you ever 
looked at them then ; not one of you cares for the 
loss of them noAv, when you have shut the sun out 
with smoke, so that he can draw nothing more, 
except brown blots through a hole in a box. — Fors, 
I., p. 64. 

As far as your scientific hands and scientific 
brains, inventive of explosive and deathful, instead 
of blossoming and life-giving Dust, can contrive, 
you have turned the Mother-Earth — Demeter, into 
the Avenger-Earth — Tisiphone — with the voice of 
your brother's blood crying out of it, in one Avild 
harmony round all its murderous sphere. — Fors, 
I., p. 69. 

There was a rocky valley between Buxton and 
Bakewell, once upon a time, divine as the Vale of 
TemiDe ; you might have seen the Gods there 
morning and evening — Apollo and all the sweet 
Muses of the Light — walking in fair procession on 
the lawns of it, and to and fro among the pinnacles 
of its crags. You eared neither for Gods nor grass, 
but for cash (which you did not know the way to 
get) ; you thought you could get it by what the 
Times calls "Railroad Enterprise." You Enter- 
prised a Railroad through the valley — you blasted 
its rocks away, heaped thousands of tons of shale 
into its lovely stream. The valley is gone, and the 
Gods with it ; and now, every fool in Buxton can 
be at Bakewell in half an hour, and every fool in 
Bakewell at Buxton ; which you think a lucrative 
process of exchange— you Fools everywhere.— Fors, 
I., p. 64. 

You have made race-courses of the cathedrals of 
the earth— the mountains. Your one conception 
of pleasure is to drive in railroad carriages round 
their aisles, and eat off their altars. You have put 
a railroad bridge over the fall of Scliaffhausen. 
You have tunnelled the cliffs of Lucerne by Tell's 
chapel ; you have destroyed the Clarene shore of 



406 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

the Lake of Geneva; there is not a qniet valley in 
England that you have not filled with bellowing 
fire; there is no particle left of English land which 
you have not trampled coal ashes into ; nor any 
foreign city in which the spread of your presence is 
not marked among its fair old streets and happy 
gardens by a consuming white lei^rosy of new hotels 
and perfumers' shops: the Alps themselves, which 
your own poets used to love so reverently, you look 
upon as soaped jjoles in a bear-garden, which you 
set yourselves to climb, and slide doAvn again, with 
" shrieks of delight." — Sesame and Lilies, p. 58. 

The E:!^^glish Jonah to the English Lords.— 
Truly, as you have divided the fields of the poor, 
the poor, in their time, shall divide yours. . . . For 
the gipsy hunt is up also, as well as Hariy our 
King's ; and the hue and cry loud against your 
land and you ; your tenure of it is in dispute before 
a multiplying mob, deaf and blind as you — frantic 
for the spoiling of you. The British Constitution 
is breaking fast. It never was, in its best days, 
entirely what its stout owner flattered himself. 
Neither British Constitution, nor British law, 
though it blanch every acre with an acre of 
parchment, sealed with as many seals as the meadow 
had buttercujos, can keep your landloi-dships safe, 
henceforward, for an hour. You will have to fight 
for them, as your fathers did, if you mean to keep 
them. . . . And are you ready for that toil to-day ? 
It will soon be called for. Sooner or later, within 
the next few years, you will find yourselves in Par- 
liament in front of a majority resolved on the 
establishment of a Republic, and the division of 
lands. Vainly the landed mill-owners will shriek 
for the " operation of natural laws of political econ- 
omy." The vast natural law of carnivorous 
rapine which they have declared their Baal-Grod, in 
so many words, Avill be in equitable operation then; 
and not, as they fondly hoped to keep it, all on 
their own side. . . . 

Are you prepared to clear the streets with the 



CONDUCT OF LIFE-'' THE MOB:' 407 

Woolwich infant— thinking- that out of the mouth 
of that suckling, God will perfect your praise, 
and ordain your strength ? Be it so ; but every 
grocer's and chandler's shop in the thoroughfares 
of London is a magazine of petroleum and percus- 
sion powder; and there are those who will use both, 
among the Rei)ublicans. And you will see your 
father the Devil's will done on earth, as it is in hell. 
I call him your father, for you have denied your 
mortal fathers, and their Heavenly One. You have 
declared, in act and thought, the ways and laws of 
your sires — obsolete, and of your God — ridiculous ; 
above all, the habits of obedience, and the elements 
of justice. You were made lords over God's heri- 
tage. You thought to make it your own heritage; 
to be lords of your own land, not of God's land. 
And to this issue of ownership you are come. . . . 

To think how many of your dull Sunday morn- 
ings have been spent, for proprietj^'s sake, looking 
chiefly at those carved angels blowing trumpets 
above your family vaults; and never one of you has 
had Christianity enough in him to think that he 
might as easily have his moors full of angels as of 
grouse. And now, if ever you did see a real angel 
before the Day of Judgment, your first thought 
would be — to shoot it. 

And for your " family " vaults, what will be the 
use of them to you ? Does not Mr. Darwin show 
you that you can't wash the slugs out of a lettuce 
without disrespect to your ancestoi's ? Nay, the 
ancestors of the modern political economist cannot 
have been so pure; — they were not — he tells you 
himself — vegetarian slugs, but carnivorous ones — 
those, to wit, that you see also carved on your tomb- 
stones going in and out at the eyes of skulls. 
And, truly, I don't know what else the holes in the 
heads of modern political economists were made 
for. . . . 

This essential meaning of Religion it was your 
office mainly to teach — each of you captain and 
king, leader and lawgiver, to his people; — viceger- 
ents of your Captain, Christ. And now— you mis- 



408 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

erable jockeys and gamesters — you can't get a, seat 
in Parliament for those all but worn-out buckskin 
breeches of yours, but by taking off your hats to 
the pot-boy. Pretty classical statues you will make, 
Coriolanuses of the nineteenth century, humbly 
promising, not to your people gifts of corn, but to 
your pot-boys, stealthy sale of adulterated beer ! 

Obedience ! — you dare not so much as utter the 
word, whether to pot-boy or any other sort of boy, 
it seems, lately ; and the half of you still calling 
themselves, Lords, Marquises, Sirs, and other such 
ancient names, which — though omniscient Mr. 
Buckle says they and their heraldry are nought — 
some little prestige lingers about still. You your- 
selves, what do you yet ;mean by them — Lords of 
what? — Herrs, Signors, Dukes of what? — of Avhom ? 
Do you mean merely, when you go to the root of 
the matter, that you sponge on the British farmer 
for your living, and are strong-bodied paupers com- 
pelling your dole ? 

To that extent, there is still, it seems, some force 
in you. Heaven keep it in you; for, as I have said, 
it wall be tried, and soon; and you would even your- 
selves see what was coming, but that in your hearts 
— not from cowardice, but from shame — you are 
not sure whether you Avill be ready to fight for your 
dole ; and w^ould fain persuade yourselves it will 
still be given you for form's sake, or pity's. 

No, my lords and gentlemen: you won it at the 
lance's point, and must so hold it, against the clubs 
of Sempach, if still you may. No otherwise. . . . 
And the real secret of those strange breakings of 
the lance by the clubs of Sempach, is — " that vil- 
lanous saltpetre "—you think? No, Shakespearian 
lord; nor even the sheaf-binding of Arnold, which 
so stopped the shaking of the fruitless spiculte. The 
utter and inmost secret is, that you have been fight- 
ing these three hundi-ed years for what you could get, 
instead of what you could give. You were ravenous 
enough in rapine in the olden times ; but you lived 
fearlessly and innocently by it, because, essentially, 
you Avanted money and food to give— not toconsume; 



CONDUCT OF LIFE—'' THE MOUr J.09 

to inaiiitaiu yuur followers with, not to swallow 
yourselves. Your chivalry was founded, invai-iably, 
by knights who were content all their lives with 
their horse and armor, and daily bread. Your 
kings, of true power, never desired for theuiselves 
more — down to the last of them, Friedrich. What 
they did desire was strength of manhood round 
them, and, in their own hands, the power of lar- 
gesse. — Furs Claciyt^ra, II., j^p. 250-204. 

Real Kixgs. — Because you are king of a nation, 
it does not follow that you are to gather for youx*- 
seli all the wealth of that nation; neither, because 
you are king of a small part of the nation, and lord 
over the means of its maintenance — over field, or 
mill, or mine — are you to take all the produce of 
that i^iece of the foundation of national existence 
for yourself. 

Real kings, on the contrary, are known invariably 
by their doing quite the reverse of this ; by their 
taking the least possible quantity of the nation's 
work for themselves. There is no test of real king- 
hood so infallible as that. Does the crowned crea- 
ture live simply, bravely, unostentatiouslj^? proba- 
blj' he is a King. Does he cover his bodj^ with 
jewels, and his table with delicates ? in all probabil- 
ity he is n(jt a King. It is possible he may be, as 
Solomon w'as; but that is w4ien the nation shares 
liis splendor with him. Solomon made gold, not 
only to be in his own palace as stones, but to be in 
Jerusalem as stones. But even so, for the most 
part, these splendid kinghoods expire in ruin, and 
only the true kinghoods live, which are of royal 
laborers governing loyal laborers; who, both lead- 
ing rough lives, establish the true dynasties. — 
Crown of Wild Olive, Lect. II., p. 02. 

How comes it to pass that a captain will die with 
his jjassengers, and lean over the gunwale to give 
the parting boat its course; but that a king will not 
usually die with — much less for — his passengers; 
thinks it rather incumbent on his passengers, in 
any number, to die for him f — Crown of Wild Olive, 
Lect. 111., p. 80. 



410 A liUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

Strange! to think how the Moth-kings lay xip 
treasures for the moth, and the Rust-kings, who 
are to tlieir jjeoples' strength as rust to armor, lay 
up treasures for the rust ; and the Robber-kings, 
treasures for the robber; but how few kings have ever 
laid up treasures that needed no guarding — treas- 
ures of Avhich, the more thieves there were, the bet- 
ter ! Broidered robe, only to be rent ; helm and 
sword, only to be dimmed ; jewel and gold, only to 
be scattered : there have been three kinds of kings 
who have gathered these. Suppose there ever 
should arise a Fourth order of kings, who had read, 
in some obscure writing of long ago, that there was 
a Fourth kind of treasure, which the jewel and 
gold could not equal, neither should it be valued 
with i5ure gold. A web more fair in the weaving, 
by Athena's shuttle ; an armor, forged in diviner 
fire by Vulcanian force ; a gold onlj?' to be mined in 
the sun's red heart, where he sets over the Delphian 
cliffs ; — deep-pictured tissue, impenetrable armor, 
potable gold ! — the three great Angels of Conduct, 
Toil, and Thought, still calling to us, and waiting 
at the posts of our doors, to lead us, if we would, 
with their winged power, and guide us, with their 
inescapable eyes, by the path which no fowl know- 
eth, and which the vulture's eye has not seen ! Sup- 
pose kings should ever arise, who heard and be- 
lieved this word, and at last gathered and brought 
forth treasures of— Wisdom— for their people ? Think 
Avhat an amazing business that would be ! How 
inconceivable, in the state of our present national 
wisdom. That we should bring up our peasants to 
a book exercise instead of a bayonet exercise I — 
organize, drill, maintain with pay, and good gener- 
alship, armies of thinkers, instead of armies of 
stabbers ! — find national amusement in reading- 
rooms as weli as rifle-grounds; give prizes for a fair 
shot at a fact, as well as for a leaden splash on a 
target. — Sesame and Lilies, p. 69. 

The English Squire. — It remains true of the 
J^nglish. squire to this day, that for the m ost part, 



CONDUCT OF LIFE—'' THE MOB." 411 

be thinks that his kingdoiu is given him that he 
may be bright and brave; and not at all that the 
sunshine or valor in him is meant to be of use to 
his kingdom.— i^oy.s', I., p. 39. 

Squires, are you, and not Workmen, nor Labor- 
ers, do you answer next ?— Yet, I have certainly 
sometimes seen engraved over your family vaults, 
and especially on the more modern tablets, those 
comfortful words, " Blessed are the dead which die in 
the Lord." But I observe that yovi are usually 
content, with the help of the village stone-mason, 
to say onli/ this concerning your dead ; and that 
you but rarely venture to add the "yea "of the 
Spirit, " that they may rest from their Labors, and 
their Works do follow then)." 

If there be one rather than another who will have 
strict scrutiny made into his use of every instant of 
his time, every syllable of his speech, and every 
action of his hand and foot— on peril of having 
hand and foot bound, and tongue scorched, in 
Tophet— that responsible person is the British 
Squire. 

Very strange, the unconsciousness of this, in his 
own mind, and in the minds of all belonging to him. 
p]ven the greatest painter of him— the Reynolds who 
has filled England with the ghosts of her noble 
squires and dames;— though he ends his last lecture 
in the Academy with " the name of Michael Angelo," 
never for an instant thought of following out the 
purposes of Michael Angelo, and painting a Last 
Judgment upon Squires, with the scene of it laid 
in Leicestershire. Appealing lords and ladies on 
either hand : "Behold, Lord, here is Thy land; which 
I have— as far as my distressed circumstances would 
permit— laid up in a napkin. Perhaps there may 
be a cottage or so less upon it than when I came 
into the estate,— a tree cut down here and there 
imprudently;— but the grouse and foxes are undi- 
minished. Behold, there Thou hast that is Thine." 
And what capacities of dramatic effect in the cases ' 
of less prudent owners— those who had said in their 



412 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

hearts, " My Lord delayeth His coming." Michael 
Angelo's St. Bartholomew, exhibiting his own skin 
flayed off him, awakes but a minor interest in that 
classic picture. How many an English squire might 
not we, with more pictorial advantage, see repre- 
sented as adorned with the flayed skins of other 
people ?—Fors, II., pp. 356, 257. 

Loiv^dojV as a Squirrel-cage.— England has a 
vast quantity of ground still food-producing, in 
corn, grass, cattle, or game. With that territory 
she educates her squire, or typical gentleman, and 
his tenantry, to Avhoni, together, she owes all her 
power in the world. With another large portion 
of territory — now continually on the increase — she 
educates a mercenary pojoulation, ready to produce 
any quantity of bad articles to anybody's order ; 
population which every hour that passes over them 
makes acceleratingly avaricious, immoral, and in- 
sane. In the increase of that kind of territory and 
its people, her ruin is just as certain as if she 
were deliberately exchanging her corn-growing 
land, and her heaven above it, for a soil of arsenic, 
and rain of nitric acid. . . . 

Now the action of the squire for the last fifty 
years has been, broadly, to take the food from the 
ground of his estate, and carry it to London, where 
he feeds with it a vast number of builders, uphol- 
sterers (one of them charged me five pounds for 
a footstool the other day), carriage and harness 
makers, dress-makers, grooms, footmen, bad musi- 
cians, bad painters, gamblers, and harlots; and in 
supply of the wants of these main classes, a vast 
number of shopkeepers of minor useless articles. 
The muscles and the time of this enoi-mous popula- 
tion being wholly unproductive — (for of course time 
spent in the mere process of sale is unproductive, 
and much more that of the footnum and groom, 
while that of the vulgar upholsterer, jeweller, fid- 
dler, and painter, etc., is not only unproductive, 
but mischievous) — the entire mass of this London 
population do nothing whatever either to feed or 



CONDUCT OF LIFE^" THE MOli^ 413 

clothe themselves ; and their vile lite preventing' 
them from all rational entertainment, they are com- 
pelled to seek some pastime in vile literatux'e, the 
demand for which again occupies another enormous 
class, who do nothing to feed or dress themselves ; 
finally, the vain disputes of this vicious poinilation 
give employment to the vast industry of the law- 
yers and tlieir clerks, Avho similarly do nothing to 
feed or dress themselves. 

Now the peasants might still be able to sui^ply 
this enormous town population with food (in the 
form of the squire's rent) ; but it cannot, without 
machinery, supply the llimsy dresses, toys, metal 
work, and other rubbish belonging to their accursed 
life. Hence over the whole country the sky is 
blackened and the air made pestilent, to supply 
London and other such towns with their iron I'ail- 
ings, vulgar upholstery, jewels, toys, liveries, lace, 
and other means of dissipation and dishonor of 
life. Gradually the country people cannot even 
supply food to the voracity of the vicious centre ; 
and it is necessary to import food from other coun- 
tries, giving in exchange any kind of commodity 
we can attract their itching desires for, and pro- 
duce by machinery. The tendency of the entire 
national energy is therefore to approximate more 
and more to the state of a squirrel in a cage, or a 
turnspit in a Avheel, fed by foreign masters with 
nuts and dog's-meat. 

And indeed when we rightly conceive the relation 
of London to the country, the sight of it becomes 
more fantastic and wonderful than any dream. 
Hyde Park, in the season, is the great rotatory form 
of the vast squirrel-cage; round and round it go the 
idle company, in their reversed streams, urging 
themselves to their necessary exercise. They can- 
not with safety even eat their niTts, without so 
much" revolution " as shall, in Venetian language, 
" comply with the demands of hj^giene." Then they 
retire into their boxes, with due quantity of straw ; 
the Belgravian and Piccadillian streets outside the 
railings being, when one sees clearly, nothing but 



414 A nVSKlN ANTHOLOGY. 

the squirrel's box at the side of his wires. And then 
think of all the rest of the metropolis as the crea- 
tion and ordinance of these squirrels, that they 
may squeak and whirl to their satisfaction, and yet 
be ied.—Fors, II., pp. 343-245. 

"Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves."— The 
pantomime was, as I said, Ali Baba and the Forty 
27iieves. The forty thieves were girls. The forty 
thieves had forty companions, who were girls. 
The forty thieves and their forty companions were 
in some way mixed up with about four hundred 
and forty fairies, who were girls. There was an 
Oxford and Cambridge boat-race, in which the 
Oxford and Cambridge men were girls. There was 
a transformation scene, Avith a forest, in Avhich the 
flowers were girls, and a chandelier, in which the 
lamps were girls, and a great rainbow, Avhieli 
was all of girls. . . . And there was a little actress, 
of whom I have chiefly to speak, Avho played ex- 
quisitely the little part she had to play, a pas cle 
deux dance with the donkey. . . . She did it beauti- 
fully and simply, as a child ought to dance. She 
was not an infant prodigy ; there was no evidence, 
in the finish or strength of her motion, that she 
had been put to continual torture through half 
her eight or nine years. . . . She danced her joy- 
ful dance with perfect grace, spirit, sweetness, and 
self-forgetfulness. And through all the vast theatre, 
full of English fathers and mothers and children, 
there was not one hand lifted to give her sign of 
praise but mine. 

Presently after this, came on the forty thieves, who, 
as I told you, were girls; and, there being no thiev- 
ing to be presently done, and time hanging heavy 
on their hands, arms, and legs, the forty thief-girls 
proceeded to light forty cigars. Whereupon the 
British public gave them a round of applause. 
Whereupon I fell a-thinking ; and saw little more 
of the piece, except as an ugly and disturbing 
dream. — Time and Tide, pp. 33-25. 

The Conscience of the Briton a Dark Lan- 
tern. — The British soul, I observe, is of late years 



CONDUCT OF LIFE—'' THE MOB:' 415 

pec'uliiirly innanied with rage at the sound of the 
words " (!onfession " and '"inquisition." The rea- 
son of which sentiment is essentially that the Brit- 
ish soul has been lately living the life of a Gruy 
Fawkes ; and is in perpetual conspiracy against 
God and man — evermore devising how it may 
wheedle the one, and rob the other. If your con- 
science is a dark lantern, — then, of course, you will 
shut it up when you see a policeman coming; but if 
it is the candle of the Lord, no man when he hath 
lighted a candle puts it under a bushel. — Fors, IV., 
p. 30. 

India as a Resource for Lovers.— Every 
mutiny, every danger, every terror, and every 
crime, occurring under, or paralyzing, our Indian 
legislation, arises directly out of our national desire 
to live on the loot of India, and the notion always 
entertained by P]nglish young gentlemen and ladies 
of good position, falling in love with each other 
without immediate prospect of establishment in 
Belgrave Square, that they can find in India, in- 
stantly on landing, a bungalow ready furnished 
Avith tlie loveliest fans, china, and shawls ; ices and 
sherbet at command ; four-and-twenty slaves suc- 
ceeding each other hourly to swing the punkah, 
and a regiment with a beautiful band to ''keep 
order" outside, all round the house. — Pleasures of 
England, p. 52. 

Irrevebea'^ce. — Have you ever taken the least 
pains to know what kind of Person the God of 
England once was ? and yet, do you not think your- 
selves the cleverest of liujnan creatures, because 
you have thrown His yoke oft', with scorn. You 
need not crow so loudly about your achievement. 
Any young gutter-bred blackguard your police pick 
up in the streets, can mock your Fathers' God 
with the best of \ou.— Fors, IV.. p. 12. 

Hippomaxia axd Oixomaxia.— The power of the 
English currency has been, till of -late, largely 
based on the national estimate of horses and of wine: 
so that a man might always give any price to fur- 



416 A nVSKI^ ANTHOLOGY. 

iiish choicely his stable, or his cellar, and receive pub- 
lic approval therefor : but if he gave the same suui to 
furnish his library, he was called mad, or a biblio- 
maniac. And although he might lose his fortune 
by his horses, and his health or life by his cellar, 
and rarely lost either bj^ his books, he was yet never 
called a Hipijo-maniac nor an Oino-maniac ; but 
only Bibliomaniac, because the current worth of 
money Avas understood to be legitimately founded 
on cattle and wine, but not on literature. — Munera 
Pnlveris, p. 5G. 

MoDERN^ Heroines.— You have one of them in 
perfection, for instance, iii Mr. Charles Reade's 
Griffith Oauut — " Lithe, and vigorous, and one with 
her great white gelding; " and liable to be entirely 
changed in her mind about the destinies of her life 
by a quarter of an hour's conversation with a gen- 
tleman unexpectedly handsome ; the hero also being 
a person who looks at people whom he dislikes, 
with eyes " like a dog's in the dark ; " and both 
hero and heroine having souls and intellects also 
precisely corresponding to those of a dog's in the 
dark, Avhich is indeed the essential picture of the 
practical English national mind at this moment — 
happy it it renjains doggish — Circe not usually be- 
ing content with changing people into dogs only. — 
Val D'Arno, p. 99. 

The Umfraville Hotel.— lU/i January, 1874.— 
Thinking I should be the better of a look at the 
sea, I have come doAvn to an old watering- 
place, where one used to be able to get into a 
decent little inn, and possess one's self of a parlor 
with a bow window looking out on the beach, 
a pretty carpet, and a print or two of revenue 
cutters, and the Battle of the Nile. One could have 
a chop) and some good cheese for dinner; fresh 
cream and cresses for bi-eakfast, and a plate of 
shrimps. 

I find myself in the Umfraville Hotel, a quarter of 
a mile long by a furlong deep ; in a ghastly roonj, 
five-and-twenty feet square, and eighteen high, — 



CONDUCT OF LIFE—'' THE MOB^ 417 

that is to say, just four times as big as I want, and 
which I can no more light with my caudles in the 
evening than I could the Peak cavern. A gas ap- 
paratus iu the middle of it serves me to knock my 
head against, but I take good care not to light it, 
or I should soon be stopped from my evening's work 
by a headache, and be unfit for my morning's busi- 
ness besides. The carpet is threadbare, and has the 
look of having been spat upon all over. There is 
only one window, of four huge panes of glass, 
through which one commands a view of a plaster 
balcony, some ornamental iron railings, an espla- 
nade ; and — well, I suppose — in the distance, that 
is really the sea, where it used to be. — Fors, II., 
p. 153. 

The Light-outspeeding Telegraph. —There 
was some excuse for your being a little proud when, 
about last sixth of April (Coeur de Lion's death-day, 
and Albert Diirer's), you knotted a copper wire all 
the way to Bombay, and flashed a message along 
it, and back. But what was the message, and what 
the answer ? Is India the better for what you said 
to her ? Are you the better for what she replied ? 
If not, you have only wasted an all-around-the- 
world's length of copper wire — which is, indeed, 
about the sum of your doing. If you had had, per- 
chance, two words of common sense to say, though 
you had taken wearisome time and trouble to send 
them ; — though you had written them slowly in 
gold, and sealed them with a hundred seals, and 
sent a squadron of ships of the line to carry the 
scroll, and the squadron had fought its way round 
the Cape of Good Hope, through a year of storms, 
with loss of all its ships but one — the two words of 
coiinnon sense would have been worth the carriage, 
and more. But you have not anything like so much 
as that, to sa.j, either to India, or to any other 
j>lace. — Fors, I., p. 68. 

England thf cruellest and foolishest Nation 
ON THE Earth.— In a little Avhile, the discoveries of 
v.'iiich we are now so proud will be familiar to all. 



418 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

The marvel of the future will not be that we should 
have discerned them, but that our predecessors were 
blind to them. We may be envied, but shall not 
be praised, for having been allowed first to perceive 
and proclaim what could be concealed no longer. 
But the misuse we made of our discoveries will be 
remembered against us, in eternal history ; our in- 
genuity in the vindication, or the denial, of species, 
will be disregarded in the face of the fact that we 
destroyed, in civilized Europe, every rare bird and 
secluded flower ; our chemistry of agriculture will 
be taunted with the memories of irremediable fam- 
ine ; and our mechanical contrivance will only 
make the age of the mitrailleuse more abhorred 
than that of the guillotine. 

Yes, believe me, in spite of our political liberality, 
and poetical philanthropy ; in spite of our alms- 
houses, hospitals, and Sunday-schools ; in spite of 
our missionary endeavors to preach abroad Avhat 
we cannot get believed at home ; and in spite of 
our wars against slavery, indemnified by the pre- 
sentation of ingenious bills — we shall be remem- 
bered in history as the most cruel, and therefore 
the most unwise, generation of men that ever yet 
troubled the earth : — the most cruel in proportion 
to their sensibility — the most unwise in proportion 
to their science.— ^a^/e's Nest, p. 28. 

The feudal and monastic buildings of Europe, 
and still more the streets of her ancient cities, are 
A^anishing like dreams : and it is difficult to imagine 
the mingled envy and contempt with Avhicli future 
generations will look ))ack to us, who still possessed 
such things, yet made no effoi-t to preserve, and 
scarcely any to delineate them. — Le(-tures on Art, 
p. 73. 

JoHX Bull as a small Peddler.— If war is to be 
made by money and machinery, the nation which 
is the largest and most covetous multitude will win. 
You may be as scientific as you choose ; the mob 
that can pay more for sulphuric acid and gunpow- 
der will at last poison its bullets, thi'ow acid in your 



CONDUCT OF LIFE-'' THE MOB^ 419 

faces, and make an end of you ; — of itself, also, in 
good time, but of you first. And to the English 
j)eople the choice of its fate is very near now. It 
may spasmodically defend its property with iron 
walls a fathom thick, a few years longer — a very 
few. No walls will defend either it, or its havings, 
against the multitude that is breeding and spread- 
ing, faster than the clouds, over the habitable 
earth. We shall be allowed to live by small ped- 
dler's business and ironmongery — since Ave have 
chosen those for our line of life — as long as we are 
found useful black servants to the Americans ; and 
are content to dig coals and sit in the cinders ; and 
have still coals to dig : they once exhausted, or got 
cheaper elsewhere, we shall be abolished. But if 
we think more wisely, while there is yet time, and 
set our minds again on multiplying Englishmen, 
and not on cheapening English wares ; if we resolve 
to submit to wholesome laws of labor and econo- 
my, and, setting our political squabbles aside, try 
how many strong creatures, friendly and faithful to 
each other, we can crowd into every spot of Eng- 
lish dominion, neither poison nor iron will prevail 
against us ; nor traffic, nor hatred: the noble nation 
will yet, by the grace of Heaven, rule over the ig- 
noble, and force of heart hold its own against fire- 
balls. — Athena, p. 88. 

Address by a mangled Coj^vict to a benevolent 
Gentleman. 

At breakfast this morning, Oct. 34, 1873, 1 took up 
the Pall Mall Gazette, for the 31st, and chanced 
on the following stanzas : — 

Mr. P. Taylor, honnered Sir, 

Accept these verses I indict. 
Thanks to a gentle mother dear 

AVhitch taught these infant hands to rite 

And thanks nnto the Chaplin here, 

A heminent relidjous man, 
As kind a one as ever dipt 

A beke into the flowing can. 



420 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

He points out to me most clear 

How sad and sinful! is my ways, 
And numerous is the briney tear 

Whitch for that man I nightly prays. 

" Cohen," he ses, in sech a voice 1 
" Your lot is hard, your stripes is sore; 

But Cohen," he ses, "rejoice! rejoice! 
And never never steale no more! " 

His langwidge is so kind and good, 

It Avorks so strong on me inside, 
I woold not do it if I could, 

I coold not do it if I tryed. 

All, wence this moisteur im my eye 
Whot makes mu turn agin my food ? 

O, Mister Taylor, arsk not why, 
line so cut up with gratitood. 

Fansy a gentleman like you, 

No paultry Beak, but a IM.P., 
A riggling in your heasy chair 

The riggles they put onto me. 

I see thee shudderin ore thy wine,^ 

You hardly know what you ai-e at, 
Whenere you think of Us emplyin 

The bloody and unhenglish Cat. 

Well may your indigernation rise ! 

I call it Manley what you feeled 
At seeln Briton's n-k-d b-cks 

By brutial jailors acked and weald. 

Habolish these yere torchiers! 

Dont liave no horgies any more 
Of arf a dozen orflcers 

All wallerin in a fellers goar. 

Imprisonment alone is not 
A thing of whitch we woold complane; 

Add ill-conwenience to our lot, 
But do not give the convick pain. 

And well you know that's not the wust. 
Not if you went and biled us whole; 

The Lash's degeradation !— that's 
What cuts us to the wery soul ! 

—Fors, I., pp. 305, 306. 

The Americans.— This is their speciality, thie 
their one gift to their race : — to show men how oiuf. 
to worsliip — how never to be asliaiued in the jv «t; 
ence of anything. — Foi's, I., p. 170. 



CONDUCT OF LIFE—"' THE MOB." 421 

For the oil of the trees of Getliseiiuine, your 
American friends have struck oil more finely in- 
flammable. Let Aaron look to it, how he lets any 
run down his beard ; and the wise virgins trim 
their wicks cautiously, and Madelaine laPutroleuse, 
with her improved spikenard, take good heed how 
she breaks her alabaster, and comjiletes the wor- 
ship of her Christ.— Fo;-5, I., p. 169. 

If I had to choose, I would tenfold rather see the 
tyranny of old Austria triumphant in the old and 
new worlds, and trust to the chance (or rather the 
distant certainty) of some day seeing a true Emperor 
born to its throne, than, with every privilege of 
thought and act, run the most distant risk of see- 
ing the thoughts of the j^eople of Germany and 
England become like the thoughts of the people of 
America.* — Time and Tide, p. 95. 

* My Americans friends— of wliora one, Charles Eliot Norton, 
of Canibriclf?e, is tire best I have in the world— tell me I know 
nothing about America. It may be so, and they must do mo 
the justice to otserve tliat I, therefore, usually say nothing 
about America. But this I say, because th.e Americans as a 
nation set their trust in liberty and in equality, of which I 
detest the one, and deny the possiljility of the otlier; and be- 
cause, also, as a nation, they are wholly undcsirous of Rest, 
and incapable of it; irrevent of tlienisi^lvcs, both in the present 
and in the future; discontejited with what they are, yot having 
no idml of anything which they desire to become, as the tide 
of the troubled sea, when it cannot rest. 



PART IV. 

SCIENCE. 



A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 



PART IV.-SCIENCE. 

CHAPTER I. 
Serpents and Birds. 



SERPENTS. 

A SPECTRAL Procession op spotted Dust.— The 
serpent crest of the king's crown, or of the god's, 
on the pillars of Egypt, is a mystery ; but the ser- 
pent itself, gliding past the pillar's foot, is it less a 
mystery? Is there, indeed, no tongue, except the 
mute forked flash from its lips, in that running 
brook of horror on the ground ? . . . That rivulet 
of smooth silver— how does it flow, think you ? It 
literally rows on the earth, with every scale for an 
oar ; it bites the dust with the ridges of its body. 
Watch it, when it moves sloAvly :— A wave, but with- 
out wind ! a current, but with no fall ! all the body 
moving at the same instant, yet some of it to one 
side, some to another, or some forv^^ard, and the 
rest of the coil backwards ; but all with the same 
calm will and equal way— no contraction, no exten- 
sion ; one soundless, causeless, march of sequent 
rings, and spectral procession of spotted dust, with 
dissolution in its fangs, dislocation in its coils. 
Startle it ;— the winding stream will become a 
twisted arrow;— the wave of poisoned life will lash 
through the grass like a cast lance. It scarcely 
breathes with its one lung (the other shrivelled and 
abortive); it is passive to the sun and shade, and 
is cold or hot like a stone ; yet " it can outclinib the 
monkey, outswim the fish, outleap the zebra, out- 
wrestle the athlete, and crush the tiger." It is a 

425 



426 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

divine hieroglyph of the demoniac power of the 
earth— of the entire earthly nature. As the bird is 
the clothed power of the air, so this is the clothed 
power of the dust ; as the bii-d the symbol of the 
spirit of life, so this of the grasp and sting of death. 
— Athena, p. 58. 

A Honeysuckle with a Head put on. — I said 
that a serpent was a honeysuckle with a head 2)ut 
on. You perhaps thought 1 was jesting ; but no- 
thing is more mysterious in the compass of creation 
than the relation of flowers to the serpent tribe. . . . 
In the most accurate sense, the honeysuckle is an 
anguis—Si strangling thing. The ivy stem increases 
with age, Avithout compressing the tree trunk, any 
more than the rock, that it adorns ; but the wood- 
bine retains, to a degree not yet measured, but 
almost, I believe, after a certain time, unchanged, 
the first scope of its narrow contortion ; and the 
growing wood of the stem it has seized is contorted 
with it, and at last paralyzed and killed. — Deuca- 
lion, p. 189. 

Deadly Serpents all have sad Colors.— The 
fatal serpents are all of the French school of art — 
French gray ; the throat of the asp, French blue, 
the brightest thing I know in the deadly snakes. 
The rest are all gravel color, mud color, blue-pill 
color, or in general, as I say, French high-art color. 
— BeurMlion, p. 191. 

A Serpent in Motion. — Yoii see that one-half of 
it can move anywhere without stirring the other ; 
and accordingly you may see a foot or two of a 
large snake's body moving one way, and another 
foot or two moving the other way, and a bit be- 
tween not moving at all; which I, altogether, think 
we may siDCcifically call "Parliamentary" motion. 
— Deucalion, p. 193. 

A Serpent's Tongue.— But now, here's the first 
thing, it seems to me, Ave've got to ask of the 
scientific people, what use a serpent has for his 
tongue, since it neither wants it to talk with, to 
taste with, to hiss with, nor, so far as I know, to 



SCIENCE— SERPENTS AND BIRDS. ^_ 427 

lick with, and least of all to sting with ; and yet, 
for people who do not know the creature, the little 
vibrating forked thread, flashed out of its mouth, 
and back again, as quick as lightning, is the most 
threatening part of the beast; but what is the use 
of it? Nearly every other creature but a snake 
can do all sorts of mischief with its tongue. A 
woman worries with it, a chameleon catches flies 
with it, a snail files away fruit with it, a humming- 
bird steals honey with it, a cat steals milk with it, 
a pholas digs holes in rocks with it, and a gnat digs 
holes in us with it ; but the poor snake cannot do 
any manner of harm with it Avhatsoever; and what 
is 7iis tongue forked for ? — Deucalion, p. 185. 

How Eels swim.— Nothing in animal instinct or 
movement is more curious than the way young 
eels get up beside the waterfalls of the highland 
streams. They get first into the jets of foam at the 
edge, to be thrown ashore by them, and then wrig- 
gle up the smooth rocks — heaven knows how. If 
you like, any of you, to put on greased sacks, with 
your arms tied down inside, and your feet tied 
together, and then try to wriggle up after them on 
rocks as smooth as glass, I think even the skilfulest 
members of the Alpine Club will agree with me as 
to the difficulty of the feat ; and though I have 
watched them at it for hours, I do not know how 
much of serpent, and how much of fish, is mingled 
in the motion.— Deucalion, p. 188. 



BIRDS. 

The bird is little more than a drift of the air 
brought into form by plumes ; the air is in all its 
quills ; it breathes through its whole frame and 
flesh, and glows with air in its fiying, like blown 
llame : it rests upon the air, subdues it, surpasses it, 
outraces it ; — is the air, conscious of itself, conquer- 
ing itself, ruling itself. 

Also, into the throat of the bird is given the voice 
of the air. All that in the wind itself is weak, wild, 



428^ A nUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

useless in sweetness, is knit together in its song. 
As we may imagine the Avild form of the clone! 
closed into the i^erfect form of the bird's wings, so 
the wild voice of the cloud into its ordered and com- 
manded voice ; unwearied, rii^pling through the 
clear heaven in its gladness, interpreting all intense 
passion through the soft spring nights, bursting 
into acclaim and rapture of choir at daybreak, or 
lisping and twittering among the boughs and 
hedges through heat of daj', like little winds that 
only make the cowslip bells shake, and ruffle the 
petals of the wild rose. 

Also, upon the jjlumes of the bird are put the colors 
of the air : on these the gold of the cloud, that can- 
not be gathered by any covetousness; the rubies of 
the clouds, that are not the price of Athena, but are 
Athena ; the vermilion of the cloud-bar, and the 
flame of the cloud crest, and the snow of the cloud, 
and its shadow, and the melted blue of the deep 
wells of the sky — all these, seized by the creating 
spirit, and woven by Athena hei'self into films and 
threads of plume ; with wave on wave following 
and fading along breiist, and tliroat, and opened 
wings, infinite as the dividing of the foam and the 
sifting of the sea-sand ;^even the white down of 
the cloud seeming to flutter up between the stronger 
plumes, seen, but too soft for touch. — Athena, \). 56. 

A Bird's Beak.— I do not think it is distinctly 
enough felt by us that the beak of a bird is not 
only its mouth, but its hand, or rather its two hands. 
For, as its arms and hands are turned into wings, 
all it has to depend upon, in economical and jjrac- 
tical life, is its beak. The beak, therefore, is at 
once its sword, its carpenter's tool-box, and its 
dressing-case; partly also its musical instrument; 
all this besides its function of seizing and prepar- 
ing the food, in which function alone it has to be 
a trap, carving-knife, and teeth, all in one. — Love's 
Meinie, p. IG. 

The Marriage of the Hair-brush and the 
"Whistle. — Feathers are smoothed down, as a field 



SCIENCE— SEliFENTS AND BIRDS. 429 

of corn by wind with rain; only the swathes laid in 
beautiful order. They are fur, so structurally 
plciced as to imply, and submit to, the perpetually 
swift forward motion. In fact, I have no doubt 
the Darwinian theory on the subject is that the 
feathers of birds once stuck up all erect, like the 
bristles of a brush, and have only been blown flat 
by continual flying. jN'ay, we might even suffl- 
ciently represent the general manner of conclusion 
in the Darwinian system by the statement that if 
you fasten a hair-brush to a mill-wheel, with the 
handle forward, so as to develop itself into a neck 
by moving always in the same direction, and within 
continual hearing of a steam-whistle, after a cer- 
tain number of revolutions the hair-brush will fall 
in love with the whistle ; they will marry, lay an 
egg, and the produce will be a nightingale. — Love's 
Meinie, p. 20. 

No Natural History of Birds yet written.— 
We have no natural history of birds written yet. 
It cannot be written but by a scholar and a gentle- 
man ; and no English gentleman in recent times* 
has ever thought of birds except as flying targets, 
or flavorous dishes. ... In general, the scientific 
natural history of a bird consists of four articles : 
First, the name and estate of the gentleman whose 
gamekeeper shot the last that was seen in England ; 
Secondly, two or three stories of doubtful origin, 
printed in every book on the subject of birds for 
the last fifty years ; Thirdly, an account of the 
feathers from the comb to the rump, with enumer- 
ation of the colors which are never more to l>e seen 
on the living bird by English eyes ; and, lastly, a 
discussion of the reasons why none of the twelve 
names which former naturalists have given to the 
bird are of any further use, and why the present 
author has given it a thirteenth, which is to be 
universally, and to the end of time, accepted.— 
Love's Meinie, p. 7. 

The Eagle.— Wheiy next you are travelling by 
express sixty miles an hour, past a grass bank, try 



A30 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOaY. 

to see a grasshopper, and you will get some idea of 
an eagle's oi^tical business, if it takes only the line 
of ground underneath it. Does it take more ? — 
Eagle's Nest, p. 74. 

The Robin^.— If you think of it, you will find one 
of the robin's very cliief ingratiatory faculties is his 
dainty and delicate movement — his footing it featly 
here and there. Whatever prettiness there may be 
in his red breast, at his brightest he can always be 
outshone by a brickbat. But if he is rationally 
proud of anything about him, I should think a 
robin must be proud of his legs. Hundreds of birds 
have longer and more imposing ones, but for real 
neatness, finish, and precision of action, commend 
me to his fine little ankles, and fine little feet. — 
Love's Meinie, p. 18. 

The Swallow.— The bird which lives Avith you 
in your own houses, and which purifies for you, 
from its insect pestilence, the air that you breathe. 
Thus the sweet domestic thing has done, for men, 
at least, these four thousand years. She has been 
their companion, not of the home merely, but 
of the hearth and the threshold ; companion 
only endeared by departure, and showing better 
her loving-kindness by her faithful return. Type 
sometimes of the stranger, she has softened us to 
hospitality ; type always of the suj^pliant, she has 
enchanted us to mercy; and in her feeble jjresence, 
the cowardice, or the wrath, of sacrilege has 
changed into the fidelities of sanctuary. Herald of 
our summer, she glances through our days of glad- 
ness ; numberer of our years, she would teach us 
to apjjly our hearts to Avisdom; — and yet, so little 
have we regarded her, that this very day, scarcely 
able to gather from all I can find told of her enough 
to explain so much as the unfolding of her wings, I 
can tell you nothing of her life — nothing of her 
journeying. I cannot learn how she builds, nor 
how she chooses the place of her wandering, nor 
how she traces the path of her return. Remaining 
thus blind and careless to the true ministries of the 



SGIEJSfCE—SEBPEJSfTS AND BIRDS. 431 

humble creature whom God has really sent to 
serve us, we in our pride, thinking ourselves sur- 
rounded by the pursuivants of the sky, can yet 
only invest them with majesty by giving them the 
calm of the bird's motion, and shade of the bird's 
plume : — and after all, it is well for us, if, when 
even for God's best mercies, and in His temples 
marble-built, we think that, "with angels and 
archangels, and all the company of Heaven, we 
laud and magnify His glorious name " — well for us, 
if our attempt be not only an insult, and His ears 
open rather to the inarticulate and unintended 
praise, of "the Swallow, twittering from her straw- 
built shed." — Love's Meinie, p, 53. 

I never watch the bird for a moment without 
finding myself in some fresh jjuzzle out of which 
there is no slue in the scientific books. I want to 
know, yor instance, how the bird turns. What 
does it do Avith om wing, what with the other? 
Fancy the pace that has to be stopped ; the force of 
bridle-hand put out in an instant. Fancy how the 
wings must bend Avith the strain ; what need there 
must be for the perfect aid and work of every 
feature in them. There is a i>roblem for you, stu- 
dents of mechanics — How does a swallow turn ? . . , 
Given the various proportions of weight and wingj 
the conditions of possible increase of muscular force 
and quill-strength in proportion to size ; and the 
different objects and circumstances of flight — you 
have a sei-ies of exquisitely complex problems, and 
exquisitely perfect solutions, which the life of the 
youngest among you cannot be long enough to 
read through so much as once, and of which the 
future infinitudes of human life, however granted 
or extended, never will be fatigued in admiration, 
. . . The mystery of its dart remains always inex- 
plicable to me ; no eye can trace the bending of 
bow that sends that living arrow. — Love's Meinie, 
pp. 30, 43, 40. 



432 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOQt, 



CHAPTER II. 

Botany.* 

It is better to know the habits of one plant than 
the names of a thousand ; and wiser to be happily 
familiar with those that grow in the nearest field, 
than arduously cognizant of all that plume the 
isles of the Pacific, or illumine the Mountains of 
the Moon. — Proserinna, p. 139. 

Ruskin's Tribulations in the Study of Bot- 
any. — Balfour's Manual of Botany. " Sap " — yes, 
at last. " Article 357. Course of fluids in exogenous 
stems." I don't care about the course just now: 
I want to know where the fluids come from. " If a 
plant be plunged into a weak solution of acetate 
of lead.' — I don't in the least want to know what 
happens. "From the minuteness of the tissue, it 
is not easy to determine the vessels through which 
the sap moves." Who said it was? If it had been 
easy, I should have done it myself. " Changes 
take place in the composition of the sap in its up- 
Avard course." I dare say; but I don't know yet 
what its composition is before it begins going up. 
"The Elaborated Sap by Mr. Schultz has been 
called latex.''' I wish Mr. Schultz were in a hogs- 
head of it, with the top on. " On account of these 
movements in the latex, the laticiferous vessels 
have been denominated cinenchymatous." I do 
not venture to print the expressions which I here 
mentally make use of. — Proserpina, p. 37. 

A sudden doubt troubles me, whether all poppies 
have two petals smaller than the other two. 
Whereupon I take down an excellent little school- 
book on botany — the best I have yet found, think- 
ing to be told quickly; and I find a great deal about 
opium; and, apropos of opium, that the juice of 

* See also Part II. , Chapter 11. 



SCIENCE— BOTANY. 433 

couimon celandine is of a bright orange color ; and 
I pause for a bewildered five minutes, wondering 
if a celandine is a poppy, and how many petals 
it has: going on again — because I nivist, without 
making up my mind, on either question — I am told 
to " observe the floral recei^tacle of the Calif ornian 
genus Eschscholtzia." Now I can't observe any- 
thing of the sort, and I don't want to ; and I wish 
California and all that's in it were at the deepest 
bottom of the Pacific. Next I am told to compare 
the poppy and water-lily; and I can't do that, 
neither — though I should like to ; and there's the 
end of the article ; and it never tells me whether 
one pair of petals is always smaller than the other, 
or not. — Proserpina, pp. 53, 54. 

Perfume, or Essence, is the general term for the 
condensed dew of a vegetable vapor, Avhich is with 
grace and fitness called the "being" of a plant, 
because its properties are almost always character- 
istic of the species ; and it is not, like leaf tissue or 
wood fibre, approximately the same material in 
different shapes ; but a separate element in each 
family of flowers, of a mysterious, delightful, or dan- 
gerous influence, logically inexplicable, chemically 
inconstructible, and wholly, in dignity of nature, 
above all modes and faculties of form. . . . Yet I 
find in the index to Dr. Lindley's Introduction to' 
Botany — seven hundred pages of close print — not 
one of the four words "Volatile," "Essence," 
"Scent," or "Perfume." I examine the index to 
Gray's Structural and Systematic Botany, with pre- 
cisely the same success. I next consult Professors 
Balfour and Grindon, and am met by the same 
dignified silence. Finally, I think over the possi- 
ble chances in French, and try in Figuier's indices 
to the Histoire des Flantes for " Odeur " — no such 
word ! " Parfum "—no such word ! " Essence " — 
no such word ! " Encens "—no such word ! I try 
at last " Pois de Senteur," at a venture, and am re- 
ferred to a page which describes their going to sleep. 
—Proserpina, pp. 341, 343. 



434 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

Botanic Nomenclature.— Perhaps nothing is 
more curious in the history of the human mind than 
the way in which the science of botany has become 
oppressed by nomenclature. Here is perhaps the 
first question which an intelligent child would think 
of asking about a tree : " Mamma, how does it make 
its trunk?" and you may open one botanical work 
after another, and good ones too, and by sensible 
men — you shall not find this child's question fairly 
put, much less fairly answered. You will be told 
gi-avely that a stem has received many names, such 
as culmus, stipes, and trunciis ; that twigs were 
once called flagella, but are now called ramuli ; 
and that Mr. Link calls a straight stem, wutli 
branches on its sides, a cauHs exciirreiis; and a stem, 
which at a certain distance above the earth bi-eaks 
out into irregular ramifications, a caulis delique- 
scens. All thanks and honor be to Mr. Link ! But 
at this moment, when we want to know lohy one 
stem breaks out " at a certain distance," and the 
other not at all, we find no great help in those 
splendid excurrencies and deliquescencies. — Modern 
Painters, V., p. 65. 

On heat and force, life is inseparably dependent ; 
and I believe, also, on a form of substance, which 
the philosophers call " protoplasm." I wish they 
would use English instead of Greek words. When 
I want to know why a leaf is green, they tell me it 
is colored by " chloi-ophyll," which at first sounds 
very instructive; but if they would only say plainly 
that a leaf is colored green by a thing which is 
called " green leaf," we should see more precisely 
how far we had ^ot.— Athena, p. 5L 

Why is Cinnamon aromatic and Sugar sweet ? 
— It is of no use to determine, by microscope or 
retort, that cinn-amon is made of cells with so many 
walls, or grape-juice of molecules with so many 
sides; — we are just as far as ever from understand- 
ing why these particular interstices should be 
aromatic, and these special parallelopipeds exhilar- 
ating, as we were in the savagely unscientific days 



SCIEXCE— BO TANT. 435 

wlieii we could only see with our eyes, and smell 
with our noses. — Proserpina, p. 159. 

Thk Biographies op Plants.— Our scientific 
botanists are occupied in microscopic investigations 
of structure which have not hitlierto completely 
exjilained to us either the origin, the energy, or the 
course of the sap ; and which, however subtle or 
successful, bear to the real natural history of ijlants 
only the relation that anatomy and organic chem- 
istry bear to the history of men. . . . What we 
esi3ecially need at present for educational purposes 
is to know, not the anatomy of [)lants, but their 
biography — how and where they live and die, their 
tempers, benevolences, malignities, distresses, and 
virtues.— Lectures on Art, p. 70. 

Sap. — At every pore of its surface, under ground 
and above, the plant in the spring al)sorbs moist- 
ure, which instantly disperses itself through its 
whole sj\stem " by means of some permeable quality 
of the membranes of the cellular tissue invisible to 
our eyes even by the most powerful glasses ; " in 
this way subjected to the vital power of the tree, it 
beconjes sap, properly so called, which passes down- 
wai-ds through this cellular tissue, slowly and 
secretly; and then upwards, through the great 
vessels of the tree, violently, stretching out the 
supple twigs of it as you see a flaccid water-pipe 
swell and move when the cock is turned to fill iv. 
And the tree -becomes literally a fountain, of which 
the springing streamlets are clothed with new- woven 
garments of green tissue, and of which the silver 
spray stays in the sky,— a spray, now, of leaves.— 
Proserpina, p. 38. 

The Root, of a Plant.- The feeding function of 
the root is of a very delicate and discriminating 
kind, needing much searching and mining among 
the dust, to find what it Avants. If it only wanted 
water, it could get most of that by spreading in 
iuere soft senseless limbs, like sponge, as far, and 
as far down, as it could— but to get the salt out of 
the earth it has to sift all the earth, and taste and 



436 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

tonch everj' grain of it that it can, with fine fibres. 
And therefore a root is not at all a merelj^ pas'sive 
sponge or absorbing thing, bnt an infinitel}' subtle 
tongue, or tasting and eating thing. That is why 
it is always so fibrous and divided and entangled in 
the clinging earth.— Proserpina, p. 20. 

The Flower the Final Cause op the Seed.— 
The Spirit in the plant — that is to say, its pov/er of 
gathering dead matter out of the wreck round it, 
and shaping it into its own chosen shape — is of 
course strongest at the inonient of its flowering, for 
it then not only gathers, but forms, with the great- 
est energy. . . . Only, with respect to plants, as 
animals, we are wrong in speaking as if the object 
of this strong life were only the bequeathing of it- 
self. The flower is the end or proper object of the 
seed, not the seed of the flower. The reason for 
seeds is that flowers may be; not the reason of flow- 
ers that seeds may be. The flower itself is the creat- 
ure which the sjjirit makes ; only, in connection 
Avith its perfectness, is placed the giving birth to its 
successor. . . . 

The main fact, then, about a flower is that it is 
the part of the plant's form developed at the mo- 
ment of its intensest life : and this inner rapture is 
usually marked externally for us by the flush of one 
or jnore of the primary colors. What the character 
of the flower shall be, depends entirely upon the 
portion of the plant into which this rapture of spirit 
has been put. Sometimes the life is put into its 
outer sheath, and then the outer sheath becomes 
white and pure, and full of sti-ength and grace; 
sometimes the life is put into the common leaves, 
just under the blossom, and they become scarlet or 
purple; sometimes the life is put into the stalks of 
the flower, and they Hush blue; sometimes into its 
outer enclosure or calyx; mostly into its inner cup; 
but, in all cases, the presence of the strongest life is 
asserted by characters in which the human sight 
takes pleasure, and which seem prepared with dis- 
tinct reference to us, or rather, bear, in being de- 



SCIENCE— BOTANY. 437 

lightful, evidence of having been produced by the 
power of the same spirit as our own. — Athena, p. 54. 

Fruit. — I find it convenient in this volume, and 
wish I liad tliought of the expedient before, wlien- 
ever I get into a difficulty, to leave the reader to 
work it out. lie will perhaps, therefore, be so good 
as to define fruit for himself. — Modern Painters, 
v., p. 112. 

All the most perfect fruits are developed //'o/^i ex- 
qiiisite forms either of foliage or flower. The vine 
leaf, in its generally decorative power, is the most 
important, both in life and in art, of all that shade 
the habitations of men. The olive leaf is, Avithout 
any rival, the most beautiful of the leaves of timber 
trees ; and its blossom, though minute, of extreme 
beauty. The ai3ple is essentially the fruit of the 
rose, and the peach of her only rival in her own 
color. The cherry and orange blossom ai-e the two 
types of floral snow. — Proserinna, p. 163. 

An Orange.— In the orange, the fount of fragrant 
juice is interposed between the seed and the husk. 
It is wholly independent of both; the aurantine 
rind, with its white lining and divided compart- 
ments, is the true husk ; the orange pips are the 
true seeds ; and the eatable part of the fruit is 
formed between them, in clusters of delicate little 
flasks, as if a fairy's store of scented Avine had been 
laid up by her in the holloAV of a chestnut shell, be- 
tween the nut and rind ; and then the green changed 
to gold. — Proserpina, 155. 

The Poppy.— 1 have in my hand a small red 
poppy which I gathered on Whit Sunday on the 
palace of the Caesars. It is an intensely simple, in- 
tensely floral, flower. All silk and flame: a scarlet 
cup, perfect-edged all round, seen among the wild 
grass far away, like a burning coal fallen from 
Heaven's altars. You cannot have a more complete, 
a more stainless, type of flower absolute; inside and 
outside, all flower. No sparing of color anyAvhere — 
no outside coarseness — no interior secrecies ; open as 
the sunshine that creates it ; fine finished on both 



438 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

sides, down to the extreiuest point of insertion on 
its narrow stalk; and robed in the purple of the 
Cfssars. Gather a green poppy bud, just when It 
shows tlie scai'let line at its side; break it open and 
unpack the popi^y. The whole flower is there com- 
plete in size and color; its stamens full-grown, but 
all packed so closely that the fine silk of the petals 
is crushed into a million of shapeless wrinkles. 
When the flower opens, it seems a deliverance from 
torture : the two imprisoning green leaves are 
shaken to the ground; the aggrieved corolla smooths 
itself in the svin, and comforts itself as it can; but 
remains visibly crushed and hurt to the end of its 
days. — Proserjnua, pp. 53, 58. 

The Oa^ion and the Garlic as Ethical Fac- 
tors. — The star-group, of the squills, garlics, and 
onions, has always caused me great wonder. I 
cannot understand why its beauty, and serviceable- 
ness, should have been associated with the rank 
scent whicli has been really among the most pow- 
erful means of degrading peasant life, and separ- 
ating it from that of the higher classes. — Athena, 
p. 67. 

The Oat. — Here is the oat germ^after the wheat, 
most vital of divine gifts; and assuredly, in days to 
come, fated to grow on many a naked rock in 
hitherto lifeless lands, over which the glancing 
(^heaves of it Avill shake Eweet treasure of innocent 
gold. And who shall tell us how they grow; and 
the fashion of their rustling pillars — bent, and again 
erect, at every breeze. Fluted shaft or clustered 
pier, how poor of art, beside this grass-shaft — built, 
first to sustain the food of men, then to be strewn 
under their feet ! — Proserinua, p. 106. 

The Martyr Moss.— You remember, I doubt not, 
how often in gathering what most invited gather- 
ing, of deep green, starry, jierfectly soft and living 
wood-moss, you found it fall asunder in your hand 
into multitudes of separate threads, each with its 
bright green crest, and long root of blackness. 
That blackness at the root— though only so notable 



SCIENCE- BOTANY. ^ 

in this wood-moss and collateral sj^eeies, is indeed 
a general character of the mosses, Avith rare excep- 
tions. It is their funeral blackness ; — that, I pei"- 
ceive, is the way the moss-leaves die. They do not 
fall — they do not visibly decay. But they decay in- 
visibly, in continual secession, beneath the ascend- 
ing crest. They rise to form that crest, all green 
and bright, and take the light and air from those 
out of whicli they grew; and those, their ancestors, 
darken and die slowly, and at last become a mass 
of njouldering ground. In fact, as I perceive far- 
ther, their final duty is so to die. The main work 
of other leaves is in their life — but these have to 
form the earth out of which all other leaves are 
to grow. Not to cover the rocks with golden velvet 
only, but to fill their crannies with the dark earth, 
through which nobler creatures shall one day seek 
their being. — Proserpina, p. 17. 

Leaves ribbed axd u:s'dulated.— When a leaf 
is to be spread Avide, like the burdock, it is sup- 
ported by a framework of extending ribs like a 
Gothic roof. The supporting function of these is 
geometrical ; every one is constructed like the gir- 
ders of a bridge, or beams of a floor, with all man- 
ner of science in the distribution of their substance 
in the section, for narrow and deep strength; and 
the shafts are mostly hollow. But Avhen the ex- 
tending space of a leaf is to be enriched with fulness 
of fokls, and become beautiful in wrinkles, this 
may 1)e done either by pure undulation as of a 
li(iuid current along the leaf edge, or by sharp 
" drawing " — or " gathering" I believe ladies would 
call it — and stitching of the edges together. And 
tliis stitching together, if to be done vei-y strongly, 
is done round a bit of stick, as a sail is reefed round 
a mast; and tliis bit of stick needs to be compactly, 
not geometrically strong; its function is essentially 
that of starch — not to hold the leaf up off the 
gi'ound against gravity; but to stick the edges out, 
stiffly, in a crimped frill. And in beautiful work 
of this kind, which wo are meant to study, the stays 



ftR" A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

of the leaf — or stay-bones — are finished off very 
sharply and exquisitely at the points ; and indeed 
so much so, that they prick our fingers when we 
touch theiu ; for they are not at all meant to be 
touched, but admired.— Proserpina, pp. 80, 81. 



CHAPTER III. 

Minerals. 

Crystals. — The crystalline power is essentially a 
styptic power, and wherever the earth is torn, it 
heals and binds; nay, the torture and grieving of 
the earth seem necessary to bring out its full energy; 
for you only find the crystalline living power fully 
in action, where the rents and faults are deep and 
many. — Ethics of the Dust, p. 114. 

The mineral crystals group themselves neither in 
succession, nor in sympathy; but great and small 
recklessly strive for place, and deface or distort each 
other as they gather into opponent asperities. The 
confused croAvd fills the rock cavity, hanging to- 
gether in a glittering, yet sordid heap, in which 
neai'ly every crystal, OAving to their vain conten- 
tion, is imperfect, or impure. Here and there one, 
at the cost and in defiance of the rest, rises into un- 
warped shape or unstained clearness. — Modern 
Painters, V., p- 48. 

The goodness of crystals consists chiefly in purity 
of substance, and perfectness of form : but those 
are rather the effects of their goodness, than the 
goodness itself. The inherent virtues of the crys- 
tals, resulting in these outer conditions, might 
really seem to be best described in the words we 
should use respecting living creatures — "force of 
heart" and "steadiness of jiurpose.'' There seem 
to be in some crystals, from the beginning, an un- 
conquerable i:)urity of vital power, and strength of 
crystal si^irit. Whatever dead substance, unaccep- 
tant of this energy, comes [in their way, is either 



SClEyX'E-MINEliA L S. 441 

rejected, or forced to take some ljea,utiful subordi- 
nate form ; the purity of the crystal remains unsul- 
' lied, and every atouj of it bright with coherent 
energy. 

Then the second condition is, that from the begin- 
ning of its whole structure, a fine crj-stal seems to 
have determined that it will be of a certain size and 
of a certain shape ; it persists in this jjlan, and 
comi^letes it. Here is a i^erfect crystal of quartz 
for you. It is of an unusual form, and one which 
it might seem very difficult to build — a pyramid 
with convex sides, composed of other minor pyra- 
mids. But there is not a flaw in its contour through- 
out; not one of its myriads of component sides but 
is as bright as a jeweller's facetted work (and far 
finer, if you saw it close). The crystal points are as 
sharp as javelins ; their edges will cut glass with 
a touch. Anything more resolute, consummate, 
determinate in form, cannot be conceived. Ilei'e, 
on the other hand, is a erysfal of the same substance, 
in a perfectly simple type of form — a plain six sided 
prism ; but from its base to its point, — and it is 
nine inches long, — ithasnever for one instant made 
up its mind what thickness it will have. It seems 
to have begun by making itself as thick as it 
thought possible with the quantity of material at 
conimand. Still not being as thick as it would like 
to be, it has clumsily glued on more substance at 
one of its sides. Then it has thinned itself, in a 
panic of economy; then puffed itself out again ; 
then starved one side to enlarge another ; then 
warped itself quite out of its first line. Opaque, 
rough-surfaced, jagged on the edge, distorted in the 
spine, it exhibits a quite human image of decrepi- 
tude and dishonor ; but the worst of all the signs 
of its decay and helplessness, is that half-way up, a 
parasite crystal, smaller, but just as sickly, has 
rooted itself in the side of the larger one, eating out 
a cavity round its root, and then growing back- 
wards, or downwards, contrary to the direction of 
the main crystal. Yet I cannot trace the least 
difference in purity of substance between the first 



442 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

most noble stone, and this ignoble and dissolute 
one. The impurity of the last is in its will, or 
want of will. — Ethics of the Dust, p. 58. 

The Marbles.— The soft white sediments of the 
sea draw themselves, in process of time, into smooth 
knots of sphered symmetry; burdened and strained 
under increase of pressure, they pass into a nascent 
marble ; scorched by fervent heat, they brighten 
and blanch into the snowy rock of Paros and 
Carrara. — Ethics of the Dust, i>. 140. 

These stones, Avliich men have been cutting into 
slabs, for thousands of years, to ornament their 
Ijrincipal buildings with, — and which, under the 
general name of " marble," have been the delight 
of the eyes, and the wealth of architecture, among 
all civilized nations — ai"e precisely those on which 
the signs and brands of these earth-agonies have 
been chiefly struck; and there is not a purple vein 
nor flaming zone in them, which is not the record 
of their ancient torture. — Ethics of the Dust, p. IIG, 

The substance appears to have been ijrepai'ed 
expressly in order to afford to human art a perfect 
means of carrying out its purposes. They are ot 
exactly the necessary hardness — neither so soft as 
to be incapable of maintaining themselves in deli- 
cate forms, nor so hard as always to require a blow 
to give effect to the sculptor's touch ; the mere 
pressure of his chisel produces a certain effect upon 
them. The color of the Avhite varieties is of exquis- 
ite delicacj-, owing to the partial translucency 
of the pure rock ; and it has always ajopeai-ed to 
me a most wonderful ordinance — one of the most 
marl<ed pieces of purpose in the creation— that all 
the variegated kinds should be comparatively 
opaque, so as to set off the color on the surface, 
while the white, which if it had been opaque would 
have looked somewhat coarse (as, for instance, 
common chalk does), is rendered just translucent 
enough to give an impression of extreme purity, 
but not so translucent as to interfere iu the least 



SCIENCE— MINERALS. 443 

with the distinctness of any forms into which it is 
wrought. 

The colors of variegated marbles are also for the 
most part very beautiful, especially those composed 
of purple, amber, and green, with Avhite ; and 
there seems to be something notably attractive to 
the human mind in the vague and veined laby- 
rinths of their arrangements. They are farther 
marked as the prepared material for human work 
by the dependence of their beauty on smoothness 
of surface ; for their veins are usually seen but 
dimly in the native rock ; and the colors they 
assume under the action of weather are inferior to 
those of the crystallines : it is not until wrought and 
l)olislied by man that they shoAv their character. 
Finally, they do not decompose. The exterior sur- 
face is sometimes destroyed by a sort of mechanical 
disrujition of its outer flakes, but rarely to the ex- 
tent in Avhieh such action takes place in other 
rocks ; and the most delicate sculptures, if executed 
in good marble, will remain for ages undeterio- 
Y-dXeA.— Modern Painters, IV., p. 141. 

Minerals and Minerals.— When I was a boy I 
used to care about pretty stones. I got some 
Bristol diamonds at Bristol, and some dog-tooth 
spar in Derbyshire ; my whole collection had cost 
perhaps three half-crowns, and was worth consider- 
ably less ; and I knew nothing whatever, rightly, 
about any single stone in it ; — could not even spell 
their names : but words cannot tell the joy they 
used to give me. Now, I have a collection of min- 
erals worth, perhaps, from two to three thousand 
pounds ; and I know more about some of them 
than most other people. But I am not a whit hap- 
pier, either for my knowledge, or possessions, for 
other geologists dispute my theories, to my grievous 
indignation and discontentment ; and I am miser- 
able about all my best specimens, because there are 
better in the British Museum. — Fors Ckwigera. 

The Colors of Clay, Lime, and Flint.— Nature 
seems to have set herself to make these three sub- 



444 A nUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

stances as interesting to us, and as beautiful for us, 
as she can. The clay, being a soft and changeable 
substance, she doesn't take much pains about, as 
we have seen, till it is baked ; she brings the color 
into it only when it receives a permanent form. 
But the limestone and flint she paints, in her own 
way, in their native state : and her object in paint- 
ing them seems to be much the same as in lier 
painting of flowers ; to draw us, careless and idle 
human creatures, to watch her a little, and see 
what she is about — that being on the Avhole good 
for us, her children. For Nature is always carry- 
ing on very strange work with this limestone and 
flint of hers : laying down beds of them at the bot- 
tom of the sea ; building islands out of the sea ; 
filling chinks and veins in mountains with curious 
treasures ; petrifying mosses, and trees, and shells; 
in fact, carrying on all sorts of business, subtei'- 
ranean or submarine, which it would be highly 
desirable for us, who profit and live by it, to notice 
as it goes on. And apparently to lead us to do this, 
she makes picture-books for us of limestone and 
flint ; and tempts us, like foolish children as we 
are, to read lier books by the pretty colors in them. 
The pretty colors in her limestone-books form those 
variegated marbles which all mankind have taken 
delight to polish and build with from the beginning 
of time ; and the pretty colors in her flint-books 
form those agates, jaspers, cornelians, bloodstones, 
onyxes, cairngorms, chrysoprases, which men have 
in like manner taken delight to cut, and polish, 
and make ornaments of, from the beginning of 
time ; and yet, so much of babies are they, and so 
fond of looking at the pictures instead of reading 
the book, that I question whether, after six thou- 
sand years of cutting and polishing there are above 
two or three ijeople out of any given hundred, who 
know, or care to know, how a bit of agate or a bit 
of marble Avas made, or painted. 

How it was made, may not be always verj' easy to 
say ; but with what it was painted there is no man- 
ner of qviestion. All those beautiful violet veinings 



SCIENCE-MINERALS. 445 

and variet?ations of the marbles of Sicily and Spain, 
the fiiowinii; orange and amber colors of those of 
Siena, the deep russet of the Rosso ahtico, and the 
blood-color of all the precious jaspers that enrich 
the temples of Italy ; and, finally, all the lovely 
transitions of tint in the pebbles of Scotland and 
the Rhine, Avhich form, though not the most pre- 
cious, by far the most interesting portion of our 
modern jewellers' Avork ;— all these are painted by 
nature with this one material only, variously pro- 
portioned and applied— the oxide of iron that stains 
your Tunbridge springs.— T/je Two Paths, p. 110. 

Competition^ vs. Co-operatiox.— Exclusive of 
animal decay, we can hardly arrive at a more abso- 
lute type of impurity, than the mud or.slimeof a 
damp, over-trodden path, in the outskirts of a 
manufacturing town. I do not say mud of the 
road, because that is mixed with animal refuse; but 
take merely an ounce or two of the blackest slime 
of a beaten footpath, on a rainy day, near a manu- 
facturing town. That slime we shall find in most 
cases composed of clay (orbrickdust, Avhich is burnt 
clay), mixed with soot, a little sand and water. All 
these elements are at helpless war with each other, 
and destroy reciprocalh' each other's nature and 
power : competing and fighting for place at everj'' 
tread of your foot ; sand squeezing out clay, and 
clay squeezing out water, and soot meddling every- 
where, and defiling the whole. Let us sup^sose that 
this ounce of mud is left in perfect rest, and that 
its elements gather together, like to like, so that 
their atoms may get into the closest relations 
possible. 

Let the clay begin. Ridding itself of all foreign 
substance, it gradually becomes a white earth, 
already very beautiful, and fit with help of con- 
gealing fire, to be made into finest porcelain, and 
painted on, and be kept in kings' palaces. But 
such artificial consistence is not its best. Leave it 
still quiet, to follow its own instinct of unity, and 
it becomes, not only white but clear ; not only 



U(i A nUSKIN ANTHOLOar. 

clear, but hard ; not only clear and bard, but so 
set tbat it can deal with ligbt in a wonderful Avay, 
and gather out of it the loveliest blue rays only, re- 
fusing the rest. We call it then a sapphire. 

Such being the consummation of the clay, we give 
similar permission of quiet to the sand. It also be- 
comes, first, a white earth ; then proceeds to grow 
clear and hard, and at last arranges itself in mys- 
terious, infinitely fine parallel lines, which have the 
power of reflecting, not merely the blue rays, but 
the blue, green, purple, and red rays, in the great- 
est beauty in which they can be seen through any 
hard material whatsoever. We call it then an opal. 

In next order the soot sets to Avork. It cannot 
make itself white at first ; but, instead of being dis- 
couraged, tries harder and harder; and comes out 
clear at last ; and the hardest thing in the world : 
and for the blackness that it had, obtains in ex- 
change the power of reflecting all the rays of the 
sun at once, in the vividest blaze that any solid 
thing can shoot. We call it then a diamond. 

Last of all, the water purifies, or unites itself; 
contented enough if it only reach the form of a dew- 
drop ; but if we insist on its i^roceeding to a more 
pei'fect consistence, it crystallizes into the shape of 
a star. And, for the ounce of slime which we had 
by political economy of comijetition, we have, by 
political economy of co-operation, a sapphire, an 
opal, and a diamond, set in the midst of a star of 
snow.— ifofZerw Painters, V., pp. 176, 177. 



CHAPTER IV. 

Clouds. 

All clouds are so opaque that, however delicate 
they may be, you never see one through another. 
Six feet depth of them, at a little distance, will 
wholly veil the darkest mountain edge. . . . And 
this opacity is, nevertheless, obtained without 



SCIENCE-CLOUDS. 447 

destroying the gift they have of letting broken 
light througli them, so that, between us and the 
sun, they may become golden fleeces, and float as 
helds of \iE\\t.~ Modern Painters, V., pp. 137, 138. 

All lovely clouds, remember, are quiet clouds— 
not merely quiet in appearance, because of their 
greater height and distance, but quiet actually, 
hxed for hours, it may be, in the same form and 
place. I have seen a fair-weather cloud high over 
Coniston Old Man-not on the hill, observe, but a 
vertical mile above it-stand motionless, changeless 
for twelve hours together. From four o'clock in 
the afternoon of one day I watched it through the 
mght by the north twilight, till the dawn struck it 
with full crimson, at four of the following July 
^^ovning.— Art of England, \).\m. 

OUTLiXK>fG A Cloud.-How is a cloud outlined "^ 
trranted whatever you choose to ask, concerning its 
material, or its aspect, its loftiness and luminous- 
ness-how of its limitation ? What hews it into a 
heap, or spins it into a web ? Cold, it is usually 
shapeless, I suppose, extending over large spaces 
equally, or with gradual diminution. You cannot 
have in the open air, angles, and wedges, and coils 
and cliffs of cold. Yet the vapor stops suddenly 
sharp and steep as a rock, or thrusts itself across 
the gates of heaven in likeness of a brazen bar • or 
bi-aids Itself in and out, and across and across, like 
a tissue of tapestry; or falls into ripples, hke sand: 
or into waving shreds and tongues, as fire. On 
what anvils and wheels is the vapor pointed, twisted, 
hammered, whirled, as the potter's clay ? By what 
hands IS the incense of the sea built up into domes 
of marble -^.-Modern Painters, V., p. 124. 

Cloud LusTREs.-The gilding to our eyes of a 
burnished cloud depends, I believe, at least for a 
measure of its lustre, upon the angle at which the 
rays incident upon it are reflected to the eye, just 
as much as the glittering of the sea beneath it-or 
the sparkling of the windows of the houses on the 
»i\ove.— Storm Cloud, Lect. II. 



448 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

Attached Clouds. — The opposed conditions of 
the higher and lower orders of clond, M'ith the bal- 
anced intermediate one, are beautifully seen on 
mountain summits of rock or earth. On snowy ones 
wihey are far more complex : but on rock summits 
there are three distinct forms of attached cloud in 
serene weather ; the first that of cloud veil laid 
over them, ancT falling in folds through their 
ravines (the obliquely descending clouds of the 
entering chorus in Aristoi^hanes) ; secondly, the 
ascending cloud, Avhich develops itself loosely and 
mdei^endently as it rises, and does not attach itself 
to the hillside, while the falling veil cloud clings to 
it close all the way down ; — and lastly the throned 
uloud, which rests indeed on the mountain summit, 
with its base, but rises high above into the sky, con- 
tinually changing its outlines, but holding its seat 
perhaps all day long. — Storm Cloud, Lect. II. 

Cirrus Clouds.— Their chief characters are— 
First, Symmetry : They are nearly always ai-- 
langed in some definite and evident order, common- 
ly in long ranks reaching sometimes from the zen- 
ith to the horizon, each rank composed of an infinite 
number of transverse bars of about the same length, 
each bar thickest in the middle, and terminating in 
a traceless vaporous point at each side ; the ranks 
are in the direction of the Avind, and the bars of 
course at right angles to it ; these latter are com- 
monly slightly bent in the middle. — Secondly, Sliarja- 
ness of Edge : The edges of the bars of the upper 
clouds which are turned to the wind, are often the 
sharpest Avhich the sky shows ; no outline M'hat- 
ever of any other kind of cloud, however marked 
and energetic, ever approaches the delicate decis- 
ion of these edges. — Thirdly, Multitude : The deli- 
cacy of these vapors is sometimes carried into such 
an infinity of division, that no other sensation of 
number that the earth or heaven can give is so 
h\\\)re'g,i-.i\e.— Fourthly, Purity of Color : They are 
composed of the purest aqueous vapor, free from all 
foulness of earthly gases, and of this in the lightest 



SCIENCE— CLOUDS. 449 

and most ethereal state in which it can be, to be 
A'isible. . . . Their colors are more pure and vivid,* 
and their white less sullied than those of any other 
cXond^.— Lastly, Variety : Variety is never so con- 
spicuous, as when it is united with symmetry. The 
perpetual change of form in other clouds, is monot- 
onous in its very dissimilarity, nor is difference 
striking where no connection is implied • but if 
through a range of barred clouds, crossing half the 
heaven, all governed by the same forces and falling 
into one general form, there be yet a nuirked and 
evident dissimilarity between each member of the 
great mass-«one more finely drawn, the next more 
delicately moulded, the next more gracefully bent 
— each broken into differently modelled and var- 
iously numbered groups, the variety is doubly 
striking, because contrasted with the perfect sym- 
metry of which it forms a pa.Yi.— Modern Painters, 
I., pp. 390-393. 

Thk Storm-Cloud of the Ninetkenth Cea'- 
TURY. — The first time I i-ecognized the clouds 
brought by the plague-wind as distinct in character 
was in walking back from Oxford, a,fter a hard day's 
work, to Abingdon, in the early spring of 1871. It 
would take too long to give you any account this 
evening of the particulars which drew my attention 
to them ; but during the following months I had 
too frequent opportunities of verifying my first 
thoughts of them, and on the first of July in that 
year wrote the descrijotion cf them which begins the 
Fors Clavigera of August, thus :— 

" It i;; the first of July, and I sit down to write by 
the dismalest light that ever yet I wrote by; name- 
ly, the light of this mid-summer morning, in mid- 
England (Matlock, Derbyshire), in the year 1871. 
For the sky is covered with grey clouds ; — not rain- 
cloud, but a dry black veil, which no ray of sun- 
shine can pierce ; partly diffused in mist, feeble 
mist, enough to make distant objects unintelligible, 
yet without any substance, or wreathing, or color 
of its own. And everywhere the leaves of the trees 
are shaking fitfully, as they do before a thunder- 



450 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

storm ; only not violently, but enough to show the 
passing to and fro of a strange, bitter, blighting 
wind. Dismal enough, had it been the first morn- 
ing of its kind that summer had sent. But during 
all this spring, in London, and at Oxford, through 
meagre March, through changelessly sullen April, 
through despondent May, and darkened June, 
morning after morning has come grey-shrouded thus. 

" And it is a new thing to me, and a very dreadful 
one. I am fifty years old, and more ; and since I 
was five, have gleaned the best hours of my life in 
the sun of spring and summer mornings ; and I 
never saw such as these, till now. Amd the scien- 
tific men are busy as ants, examining the sun, and 
the moon, and the seven stars, and can tell me all 
aliout them, I believe, by this time ; and how they 
move, and what they are made of. 

" And I do not care, for my part, two copper 
spangles how they move, nor what they are made 
of. I can't move them any other way than they go. 
nor make them of anything else, better than they 
are made. But I would care much and give much, 
if I could be told where this bitter wind comes from, 
and what it is made of. For, perhaps, with fore- 
thought, and fine laboratory science, one might 
make it of something else. 

"It looks i^artly as if it were made of poison- 
ous smoke ; very possibly it may be : there are 
at least two hundred furnace chimneys in a 
square of two miles on every side of me. But mere 
smoke would not blow to and fro in that wild way. 
It looks more to me as if it were made of dead men's 
souls — such of them as are not gone yet Mdiere they 
have to go, and may be flitting hither and thith- 
er, doubting, themselves, of the fittest place for 
them. ..." 

Since that Midsummer day, my attention, how- 
ever otherwise occupied, has never relaxed in its 
record of the phenomena characteristic of the 
plague-wind ; and I now define for you, as briefly 
jks possible, the essential signs of it : 

1. It is a wind of darkness:— all the former condi- 



SCIENCE—CLOUDS. 461 

tions of tormenting winds, wliether from the north 
or east, were more or less capable of co-existing 
with sunlight, and often with steady and bright 
sunlight ; but whenever, and wherever the plague- 
wind blows, be it but for ten minutes, the sky is 
darkened instantly. — 2. It is a malignant quality of 
wind unconnected with any one quarter of the com- 
pass ; it blows indifferently from all, attaching its 
own bitterness and malice to the worst characters 
of the proper winds of each quarter. It will blow 
either with drenching rain, or dry rage, from the 
south— with ruinous blasts from the west— Avith 
bitterest chills from the north — and with venomous 
blight from the east. Its own favorite quarter, 
however, is the south-west, so that it is distinguished 
in its maligiiity equally from the Bise of Provence, 
which is a north wind always, and from our own 
old friend, the east. — 3. It always blows tremulously, 
making the leaves of the trees shudder as if they 
were all aspens, but with a peculiar fitfulness 
which gives them — and I watch them this moment 
as I write — an expression of anger as well as of fear 
and distress. You may see the kind of quivering, 
and hear the ominous whimpering, in the gusts 
that precede a great thunder-storm ; but plague- 
wind is more pa;iic-struck, and feverish ; and its 
sound is a hiss instead of a wail. — 4. Not only 
tremulous at every moment, it is also intermittent 
with a rapidity quite unexampled in former weather. 
There are, indeed, days — and weeks, on which it 
blows without cessation, and is as inevitable as the 
Gulf Stream ; but also there are days when it is 
contending with healthy weather, and on such 
days it will remit for half an hour, and the sun will 
begin to show itself, and then the wind will come 
back and cover the whole sky with clouds in ten 
minutes ; and so on every half-hour, through the 
whole day; so that it is often impossible to go on 
with any kind of drawing in color, the light being 
never for two seconds the same from morning till 
evening. — 5. It degrades, while it intensifies, ordi- 
nary storm. 



452 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

Take the following sequences of accurate descrip- 
tion of thunderstorm, with plague-wind : 

"June 22, 1876.— Thunderstorm; pitch dark, with 
no blackness— hut deep, high, fllthiness of lurid, 
yet not sublimely lurid, smoke-cloud; dense manu- 
facturing mist ; fearful squalls of shivery wind, 
making Mr. Severn's sail quiver like a man in a 
fever-fit — all about fovir, afternoon — but only two 
or three claps of thunder, and feeble, though near, 
flashes. I never saw such a dirty, weak, foul storm. 
It cleared suddenly, after raining all afternoon, at 
half-past eight to nine, into jjure, natural weather, 
— low rain-clouds on quite clear, green, wet hills. 

^'August 13, 1879. — Quarter to eight, morning. — 
Thunder returned, all the air collapsed into one 
black fog, the hills invisible, and scarcely visible 
the opposite shore ; heavy rain in short fits, and 
frequent, though less formidable, flashes, and 
shorter thunder. While I have written this sentence 
the cloud has again dissolved itself, like a nasty 
solution in a bottle, with miraculous and unnat- 
ural rapidity, and the hills are in sight again. 
Half-past eight.— Three times light and three times 
dark since last I wrote, and the darkness seeming 
each time as it settles more loathsome, at last stop- 
ping my reading in mere blindness. One lurid 
gleam of white cumulus in upper lead-blue sky, 
seen for half a minute through the sulphuro s 
chimney-pot vomit of blackguardly cloud beneath, 
where its rags were thinnest. 

^'August 17, 1879. — Raining in foul drizzle, slow 
and steady; sky jiitch-dark, and I just got a little 
light by sitting in the bow- window; diabolic clouds 
over everything : and looking over my kitchen 
garden yesterday, I found it one miserable mass of 
weeds gone to seed, the roses in the higher garden 
putrefied into brown sponges, feeling like dead 
snails ; and the half-ripe strawbei-ries all rotten at 
the stalks." 

'' February 22, 1883.— Yesterday a fearfully dark 
mist all afternoon, with steady, south plague-wind 
of the bitterest, nastiest, poisonous blight, and fret- 
ful flutter. I could scarcely stay in the wood for 
the horror of it. To-day, really rather Ijright blue, 
and bright semi-cumuli, with the frantic Old Man 
blowing sheaves of lancets and chisels across the 
lake — not in strength enough, or whirl enough, to 



SCIENCE— BITS OF THOUGHT. 453 

raise it in spray, but tracing every squall's outline 
in black on the silvery grey waves, and whistling 
meanly, and as if on a flute made of a file. 

6. And now I come to the most important sign of 
the plague-wind and the plague-cloud : that in 
bringing on their peculiar darkness, they blanch 
the sun instead of reddening it. . . . I should have 
liked to have blotted down for you a bit of plague- 
cloud ; but Heaven knows, you can see enough of 
it nowadays without any trouble of mine ; and if 
you want, in a hurry, to see what the sun looks like 
through it, you've only to throw a bad half-crown 
into a basin of soap and waXew— Storm-Cloud, Lect. 
I., pp. 36-35. 



CHAPTER V. 

Bits op Thought. 

RusKO's First Piece of Published "Writij^g. 
—I do not think the causes of the color of trans- 
parent water have been sufficiently ascertained. I 
do not mean that effect of color which is simply op- 
tical, as the color of the sea, which is regulated by 
the sky above, or the state of the atmosphere ; but 
1 mean the settled color of transparent water, which 
has, when analyzed, been found pure. Now, 
copper will tinge water green, and that very 
strongly ; but water thus impregnated will not be 
transparent, and will deposit the copper it holds in 
solution upon any piece of iron which may be 
thrown into it. There is a lake in a defile on the 
north-west flank of Snowdon, which is supplied by 
a stream, which previously passes over several veins 
of copper : this lake is, of course, of a bright ver- 
digrise green, but it is not transparent. Now, the 
coloring effect of Avhich I speak, is well seen in the 
waters of the Rhone and Rhine. The former of 
these rivers, when it enters the Lake of Geneva, 
after having received the torrents descending from 



454 A BUSKIN- ANTHOLOGY. 

the mountains of the Valais, is fouled with nmd, or 
white with the calcareous matter which it holds in 
solution. Having deposited this in the Lake Le- 
man (thereby forming- an immense delta), it issues 
from the lake perfectly pure, and flows through the 
streets of Geneva so transparent, that the bottom 
can be seen 20 feet below the surface, yet so blue, 
that you might imagine it to be a solution of indigo. 
In like manner, the Rhine, after purifying itself in 
the Lake of Constance, flows forth, colored of a 
clear green ; and this under all circumstances, and 
in all weathers. It is sometimes said that this arises 
from the torrents which supply these rivers gener- 
ally flowing from the glaciers, the green and blue 
color of which may have given rise to this opinion; 
but the color of the ice is jiureiy optical, as the frag- 
ments detached from the mass appear simply white. 
Perhaps some correspondent can afford me some 
information on the subject. — Magazine of Natural 
History, 1834. 

Envy among Scientific Men.— The retardation 
of science by envy is one of the most tremendous 
losses in the economy of the present century. — Unto 
this Last, p. 51. 

Ruskin's Opinion of Modern Science, written 
IN 1853. — That modern science, Avith all its addi- 
tions to the comforts of life, and to the fields of ra- 
tional contemplation, has placed the existing races 
of mankind on a higher platform than any that 
preceded them, none can doubt for an instant ; and 
I believe the position in Avhich we find ourselves is 
somewhat analogous to that of thoughtful and la- 
borious youth succeeding a restless and heedless 
int'einKiy.— Stones of Fe/lice, III., p. 166. 

Pure Scientific Research never Rewarded. 
—My ingenious friends, science has no more to do 
with making steam-engines than with making 
breeches ; though she condescends to help you a 
little in such necessary (or it may be, conceivably, 
in both cases, sometimes unnecessary) businesses. 



SCIENCE— BITS OF THOUGHT. 455 

Science lives only in quiet places, and with odd peo- 
ple, mostly poor. ... 

You cannot be simple enough, even in April, to 
think I got my three thousand pounds Avorth of 
minerals by studying mineralogy ? Not so ; they 
were earned for me by hard labor ; my father's in 
England, and many a sunburnt vineyard-dresser's 
in Spain. — Fors, I., p. 44. 

We are glad enough, indeed, to make our profit 
of science ; we snap up anything in the way of a 
scientific bone that has meat on it, eagerly enough; 
but if the scientific man comes for a bone or a crust 
to us, that is another story. — Sesame and Lilies, 
p. 56. 

The Vibrations op the Ttmpa;^um.— It is quite 
true that the tympanum of the ear vibrates under 
sound, and that the surface of the water in a ditch 
vibrates too : but the ditch hears nothing for all 
that ; and my hearing is still to me as blessed a 
mystery as ever, and the interval between the ditch 
and me, quite as great. If the trembling sound in 
my ears was once of the marriage-bell which began 
my happiness and is now of the passing-bell which 
ends it, the difference between those two sounds to 
me cannot be counted by the number of concus- 
sions. — Athena, p. 50. 

The Study op Natural History. — For one man 
who is fitted for the study of words, fifty are fitted for 
the study of things, and were intended to have a per- 
petual, simple, and religious delight in watching the 
processes, or admiring the creatures, of the natural 
universe. Deprived of this source of pleasure, no- 
thing is left to them but ambition or dissipation ; 
and the vices of the upper classes of Europe are, I 
believe, chiefly to be attributed to this single cause. 
— Stones of Venice, III., p. 216. 

Only simple Tools needed.- A quick eye, a 
candid mind, and an earnest heart, are all the 
microscopes and laboratories which any of us need ; 
and with a little clay, sand, salt, and sugar, a man 
may find out more of the methods of geological phe- 



456 A RUSKIlsr ANTHOLOGY. 

nojiienon than ever wei-e knoAvn to Sir Charles 
Lyell. — In Montibus Sanctis, p. 25. 

Nondescript Species of Animals. — Between 
the gentes, or races of animals, and between the 
species, or families, there are invariably links — 
mongrel creatures, neither one thing nor another — 
but clumsy, blundering, hobbling, misshapen things. 
You are always thankful when you see one that you 
are not it. They are, according to old philosophy, 
in no process of development up or down, but are 
necessary, though much pitiable, where they are. 
Thus betw^een the eagle and the trout, the mongrel 
or needful link is the penguin. Well, if you ever 
saw an eagle or a windhover flying, I am sure you 
must have sometimes wished to be a windhover ; 
and if ever you saw a trout or a dolphin swimming, 
I am sure, if it was a hot day, you wished you could 
be a trout. Btit did ever anybody wish to be a pen- 
guin ? — Deucalion, p. 182. 

Would peep and botanize upon their Moth- 
er's Grave. — Men who have the habit of cluster- 
ing and harmonizing their thoughts are a little too 
apt to look scornfully upon the harder workers who 
tear the bouquet to pieces to examine the stems. 
This was the chief narrowness of Wordsworth's 
mind ; he could not understand that to break a rock 
with a hammer in search of crystal may sometimes 
be an act not disgraceful to liviman nature, and 
that to dissect a flower may sometimes be as proper 
as to dream over it ; whereas all experience goes to 
teach us, that among men of average intellect the 
most useful members of society are the dissectors, 
not the dreamers. — Modern Painters, HI., p. 309. 

The Spectrum op Blood.— My friend showed 
me the rainbow of the rose, and the rainbow of the 
violet, and the rainbow of the hyacinth, and the 
rainbow of forest leaves being born, and the rain- 
bow of forest leaves dying. 

And, last, he showed me the rainbow^ of blood. It 
was but the three hundredth part of a grain, dis- 
solved in a drop of water : and it cast its measured 



SCIENCE— BITS OF THOUGHT. 457 

bars, forevei" recognizable now to human sight, on 
the chord of tlie seven colors. And no drop of that 
red rain can now be shed, so small as that the stain 
of it cannot be known, and the voice of it heard out 
of the ground. — Time and Tide, p. 110. 

MoDBRX Scientific Knowledge an Asses' 
Bridge. — The fact is that the greater quantity of 
the knowledge which modern science is so saucy 
about, is only an asses' bi'idge, which the asses all 
stop at the top of, and which, moreover, they can't 
help stopping at the top of ; for they have from the 
beginning taken the wrong road, and so come to a 
broken bridge — a Ponte rotto over the River of 
Death, by which the Pontifex Maximus allows thein 
to pass no step farther. 

For instance — having invented telescopes and 
photography, you are all stuck up on your hobby- 
horses, because you know how big the moon is, 
and can get pictures of the volcanoes in it ! But 
you never can get any more i\\ii,n 2nctures of these, 
while in your own planet there are a thousand vol- 
canoes which yoia may jump into, if you have a 
mind to; and may one day jierhaps be blown sky 
high by, whether you have a mind or not. The 
last time the great volcano in Java was in erup- 
tion, it threw out a stream of hot water as big as 
Lancaster Bay, and boiled twelve thousand jjeople. 
That's what I call a volcano to be interested about, 
if you want sensational science. 

But if not, and you can be content in the wonder 
and the power of Nature, without her terror, — here 
is a little bit of a volcano, close at your very doors 
— Yewdale Crag, which I think will be quiet for 
our time ; and on Avhich the Anagallis tenella, and 
the golden potentilla, and the sun-dew grow to- 
gether among the dewy moss in peace. And on the 
cellular surface of one of the blocks of it, you may 
find more beauty, and learn more precious things, 
than with telescope or photograph from all the 
moons in the milky way, though every drop of it 
were another solar system.— i)et(ca7fow, pp. 142, 143. 



458 A BUS KIN ANTHOLOGY. 

Mr. Darwin's Account op the Peacock's 
Feathe:r. — I went to it myself, hoiking to leai-n 
some of the existing laws of life which regulate the 
local disposition of the color. But none of these 
appear to be known ; and I am informed only that 
peacocks have grown to be jjeacocks out of brown 
pheasants, because the young feminine brown 
pheasants like fine feathers. Wherevipon I say to 
myself, " Then either there was a distinct species of 
brown pheasants originally born with a taste for 
fine feathers ; and therefore with remarkable eyes 
in their heads, — which would be a much more won- 
derful distinction of species than being born with 
remarkable eyes in their tails,— or else all pheas- 
ants would have been peacocks by this time!" 
And I trouble myself no more about the Darwinian 
theory. — Ragle's Nest, p. 112. 

Science and Song.— You have, I doubt not, your 
new science of song, as of nest-building: and I am 
happy to think you could all explain to me, or at 
least you will be able to do so before you pass your 
natural science examination, how, by the accurate 
connection of a larynx with a bill, and by the ac- 
tion of heat, originally derived from the sun, upon 
the muscular fibre, an undulatory motion is pro- 
duced in the larynx, and an opening and shutting 
one in the bill, which is accompanied, necessarily, by 
a piping sound. — Eagle's Nest, p. 41. 

There are Sciences op the Arts, too.— It has 
become the permitted fashion among modern math- 
ematicians, chemists, and apothecaries, to call them- 
selves "scientific men," as oi^posed to theologians, 
poets, and artists. They know their sphere to be a 
separate one; but their ridiculous notion of its being 
a peculiarly scientific one ought not to be alloAved 
in our Universities. There is a science of Morals, a 
science of History, a science of Grammar, a science 
of Music, and a science of Painting ; and all these 
are quite beyond comparison higher fields for 
human intellect, and require accuracies of intens^r 



SCIENCE— BITS OF THOUGHT. 459 

observation, than either chemistry, electricity, or 
geology. — Ariadne, p. 85. 

The Cult of Ugliness.— And the universal in- 
stinct of blasphemy in the modern vulgar scientific 
mind is above all manifested in its love of what is 
ugly, and natural enthralment by the abominable; 
— so that it is ten to one if, in the description of a 
new bii'd, you learn much more of it than the enum- 
erated species of vermin that stick to its feathers ; 
and in the natui-al history museum of Oxford, hu- 
manity has been hitherto taught, not by portraits 
of great men, but by the skulls of cretins. — Storm 
Cloud, Lect. II., § 30. 

SciEXCE m. Art. — " It is very fine," sculptors 
and painters say, " and very useful, this knocking 
the light out of the sun, or into it, by an eternal 
cataract of planets. But you may hail away, so, 
for ever, and you will not knock out what we can. 
Here is a bit of silver, not the size of half-a-crown, 
on which, with a single hammer stroke, one of us, 
two thousand and odd years ago, hit out the head 
of the Apollo of Clazomenae. It is merely a matter 
of form; but if any of you philosophers, with your 
whole planetary system to hammer with, can hit 
out such another bit of silver as this, — we will take 
off our hats to you. For the present, we keep 
them on." — Ethics of the Dust, p. 127. 

Rivers not deepening but filling up their 
Beds.— Niagara is a vast Exception — and Decep- 
tion. The true cataracts and falls of the great 
mountains, as the dear little cascades and leaplets 
of your own rills, fall where they fell of old ; — that 
is to say, wherever there's a hard bed of rock for 
them to jump over. They don't cut it away— and 
they can't. They do form pools heneath in a mys- 
tic way, — they excavate them to the depth which 
will break their fall's force — and then they excavate 
no move.— Deucalioii, p. 136. 

Decay in the Scale op animated Life.— The 
decomposition of a crystal is not necessarily impure 
at all. The fermentation of a wholesome liquid be- 



460 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

gins to admit the idea slightly ; the decay of leaves 
yet more; of flowers, more; of animals, Avith greater 
painfulness and terribleness in exact proportion to 
their original vitality ; and the foulest of all cor- 
ruption is that of the body of man ; and, in his 
body, that which is occasioned by disease, more 
than that of natural death.— llodern Painters, V., 
p. 174. 

Geology. — Though an old member of the Geolog- 
ical Society, my geological observations have 
always been as completely ignored by that society 
as my remarks on political economy by the direc- 
tors of the Bank of England. — In Moidibns iSancti's. 

I do not believe that one in a hundred of our 
youth, or of our educated classes, out of directly 
scientific circles, take any real interest in geology. 
And for my own part, I do not wonder,— for it seems 
to me that geology tells us nothing really interest- 
ing. It tells us much about a world that once Avas. 
But, for my part, a world that only was, is as lit- 
tle interesting as a world that only is to be. I no 
more care to hear of the forms of mountains that 
crumbled away a million of years ago to leave room 
for the town of Kendal, than of forms of mountains 
that some future day may swallow up the town of 
Kendal in the cracks of them. I am only inter- 
ested — so ignoble and unspeculative is my disposi- 
tion — in knowing how God made the Castle Hill of 
Kendal, for the Baron of it to build on, and how he 
brought the Kent through the dale of it, for its peo- 
l^le and flocks to drink of. 

And these things, if you think of them, you Avill 
find are precisely what the geologists cannot tell 
you. They never trouble themselves about matters 
so recent, or so visible ; and while you niaj' always 
obtain the most satisfactory information from them 
respecting the congelation of the whole globe out 
of gas, or the direction of it in space, there is i-eally 
not one who can exjilain to you the making of a 
pebble, or the running of a rivulet. — Deucalion, 
p. 137. 



SCIENCE-BITS OF THOUGHT. 401 

There are, broadly, three great demonstrable 
pnriotls of the Earth's history: That in which it 
was crystallized ; that in which it was sculptured ; 
and that in which it is now being unsculptured, or 
deformed. These three periods interlace with eacli 
other, and gradate into each other — as the periods 
of liuman life do. Something dies in the child on 
the day that it is born — something is born in the 
man on the day that he dies : nevertheless, his life 
is broadly divided into youth, strength, and decrep- 
itude. In such clear sense, the Earth has its three 
ages : of their length we know as yet nothing, except 
that it has been greater than any man had imagined. 

The First Period. — But there was a period, or a 
succession of periods, dui-ing which the rocks which 
are now hard were soft ; and in wliich, out of entirely 
different positions, and under entirely different con- 
ditions from any now existing or describable, the 
masses, of which the mountains you now see are 
made, were lifted and hardened, in the positions 
they now occupy, though in what forms we can now 
no more guess than we can the original outline of 
the block from the existing statue. 

The Second Period. — Then, out of those raised 
masses, more or less in lines compliant with their 
crystalline structure, the mountains we now see were 
hewn, or worn, during the second period, by forces 
for the most part differing both in mode and vio- 
lence from any now in operation, but the result of 
which was to bring the surface of the earth into a 
form approximately that which it has possessed as 
far as the records of human history extend. — The 
Ararat of Moses's time, the Olympus and Ida of 
Homer's, are practically the same mountains now, 
that they wei-e then. 

The Third Period. — Not, however, without some 
calculable, though superficial, change, and that 
change, one of steady degradation. For in the 
third, or historical jieriod, tlie valleys excavated in 
the second period, are being filled up, and the moun- 
tains hewn in the second period, worn or ruined 
down. In tlie second era the valley of the Rhone 



462 A BUSKIN' ANTHOLOGY. 

was being cut deeper every day; now it is every day 
being filled up with gravel. In the second era, the 
scars of Derbyshire and Yorkshire were cut white 
and steep ; now they are being darkened by vegeta- 
tion, and crumbled by frost. You cannot, I repeat, 
separate the periods with precision ; but, in their 
characters, they are as distinct as youth from age. 
—Deucalion, pp. 22, 23. 

The Discovery by James Forbes of the vis- 
cous Nature op Glacier Ice. — Professor Agas.siz, 
of Neuchatel, had then [1841] been some eight or 
ten years at work on the glaciers : had built a cabin 
on one of them ; walked a great many times over 
a great many of them ; described a number of their 
phenomena quite correctly; proposed, and in some 
cases performed, many ingenious experiments upon 
them ; and indeed done almost everything that 
was to be done for them — except find out the one 
thing that we wanted to know. 

As his malicious fortune would have it, he invited 
in that year (1841) a man of acute brains — James 
Forbes — to see what he was about. The invitation 
was accepted. The visitor was a mathematician ; 
and after examining the question, for discussion of 
which Agassiz was able to supply him with all the 
data except those which were essential, resolved to 
find out the essential ones himself. Which in the 
next year (1842) he quietly did ; and in 1843 solved 
the problem of glacier motion forever: announcing, 
to everybody's astonishment, and to the extreme 
disgust and mortification of all glacier students — 
including my poor self, (not the least envious, I 
fancy, though with as little right to be envious as 
any one) — that glaciei'S wei-e not solid bodies at all, 
but semi-liqviid ones, and ran down in their beds 
like so much treacle. . . . 

But fancy the feelings of poor Agassiz in his Hotel 
des Neuchatelois ! To have had the thing under his 
nose for ten years, and missed it ! There is nothing 
in the annals of scientific mischance — (perhaps the 
ti'uer word would be scientific dulness) — to match 
it ; certainly it would be difficult for provocation 



SCIENCE— BITS OF THOUGHT. 463 

to be more bitter, — at least, for a man who thinks, 
as most of our foolish modern scientific men do 
think, that there is no good in knowing anything 
for its own sake, but only in being tlie first to find 
it out. 

Nor am I prepared altogether to justify Forbes 
in his method of proceeding, except on the terms of 
battle which men of science have laid down for 
themselves. Here is a man has been ten years at 
his diggings ; has trenched here, and bored there, 
and been over all the ground again and again, ex- 
cept just where the nugget is. He asks one to din- 
ner — and one has an eye for the run of a stream ; 
one does a little bit of pickaxing in the afternoon 
on one's own account — and walks off Avith his nug- 
get.— i^ors, II., pp. 90, 91. 

A Glacier is a River of Honey. — Above all 
substances that can be proposed for definition of 
quality, glacier ice is the most defeating. For it is 
practically plastic ; but actually viscous; — and that 
tothe full extent. You can beat or hammer it, like 
gold ; and it will stay in the form you have bcatfen 
it into, for a time ; — and so long a time, that, 
on all instant occasions of plasticity, it is practi- 
cally plastic. But only have patience to wait long 
enough, and it will run down out of the form you 
have stamped on it, as honey does, so that actvially 
and inherently, it is viscous, and not plastic. — 
Deucalion, p. 56. 



PART V. 

NATUflE AND LITERATURE. 



A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 



PART V.-NATURE AND LITERATURE. 



CHAPTER I. 

Nature. 

The Air. — The deep of air that surrounds the 
earth enters into union with the earth at its surface, 
and with its waters ; so as to be the apparent cause 
of their ascending into life. First, it warms them, 
and shades, at once, staying the heat of the sun's 
rays in its own body, but warding their force with 
its clouds. It warms and cools at once, with traffic 
of balm and frost ; so that the white wreaths are 
withdrawn from the field of the Swiss peasant by 
the glow of Libyan rock. It gives its own strength 
to the sea ; forms and fills every cell of its foam ; 
sustains the jjrecipices, and designs the valleys of 
its waves ; gives the gleam to their moving under 
the night, and the white fire to their plains under 
sunrise ; lifts their voices along the rocks, bears 
above them the spray of birds, pencils through 
them the dimpling of unfooted sands. It gathers 
out of them a portion in the hollow of its hand : 
dyes, with that, the hills into dark blue, and their 
glaciers with dying rose ; inlays with that, for sap- 
phire, the dome in which it has to set the cloud ; 
shapes out of that the heavenly flocks : divides 
them, numbers, cherishes, bears them on its bosom, 
calls them to their journeys, waits by their rest; 
feeds from them the brooks that cease not, and 
strews with them the dews that cease. It spins and 
weaves their fleece into wild tapestry, rends it, and 

467 



468 A HUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

renews ; and flits and flames, and whispers, among 
the golden threads, thrilling them with a plectrum 
of strange fire that traverses them to and fro, and 
is enclosed in them like life. 

It enters into the surface of the earth, subdues it, 
and falls together with it into fruitful dust, from 
which can be moulded flesh; it joins itself, in dew, to 
the substance of adamant ; and becomes the green 
leaf out of the dry ground; it enters into the separ- 
ated shapes of the earth it has tempered, commands 
the ebb and flow of the current of their life, fills their 
limbs with its own lightness, measures their exist- 
ence by its indwelling pulse, moulds upon their lips 
the words by Avhich one soul can be known to 
another ; is to them the hearing of the ear, and the 
beating of the heart ; and, passing away, leaves 
them to the peace that hears and moves no more. 
—Athena, p. 78. 

Clouds among the Hills- — There is more beau- 
ty in a single wreath of early cloud, pacing its way 
up an avenue of pines, or pausing among the points 
of their fringes, than in all the white heaps that fill 
the arched sky of the plains from one horizon to 
the other. And of the nobler cloud manifestations 
— the breaking of their troublous seas against the 
crags, their black spi-ay sparkling with lightnirig ; 
or the going forth of the morning along their pave- 
ments of moving marble, level-laid between dome 
and dome of snow ; — of these things there can be as 
little imagination or understanding in an inhabi- 
tant of the plains as of the scenery of another 
planet than his o\wi\.— Modern Painters, IV., p. 373. 

The Cumulus Cloud. — I have never succeeded 
in drawing a cumulus. Its divisions of surface are 
grotesque and endless, as those of a mountain ; — 
perfectly defined, brilliant beyond all power of color, 
and transitory as a dream. Even Turner never at- 
tempted to paint them, any more than he did the 
snows of the high Alps. — Modern Painter's, V., 
p. 140. 

RaijV in Temperate Climes. — The great Angel 
of the Sea — rain ;— the Angel, observe, the messen- 



NATURE AND LITERATURE— NATURE. -iGO 

ger sent to a special place on a special errand. Not 
the diffused perpetual presence of the burden of 
luist, but the going and returning of intermittent 
cloud. All turns upon that internuttence. Soft 
moss on stone and rock ;— cave-fern of tangled glen ; 
wayside well —perennial, patient, silent, clear; 
stealing through its square font of rough-hewn 
stone ; ever thus deep— no more— which the winter 
wreck sullies not, the summer thirst wastes not, in- 
capable of stain as of decline— where the fallen leaf 
floats, undecayed, and the insect darts undefiling. 
Cressed brook and ever-eddying river, lifted even 
in flood scarcely over its stepping-stones,— but 
through all sweet summer keeping tremulous music 
with harp-strings of dark water among the silver 
fingering of the pebbles. Far away in the south the 
strong river Gods have all hasted, and gone down 
to the sea. Wasted and burning, white furnaces 
of blasting sand, their broad beds lie ghastly and 
bare ; but here the soft wings of the Sea Angel 
droop still with dew, and the shadows of their 
plumes falter on the hills : strange laughings, and 
glitterings of silver streamlets, born suddenly, and 
twined about the mossy heights in trickling tin- 
sel, answering to them as they wave. — Modern 
Painters, V., p. 154. 

The Hurrica:xe Storm.— The fronting clouds 
come leaning forward, one thrusting the other 
aside, or on ; impatient, ponderous, impendent, like 
globes of rock tossed of Titans— Ossa on Olympus 
—but hurled forward all, in one Avave of cloud- 
lava— cloud whose throat is as a sepulchre. Fierce 
behind them rages the oblique wrath of the rain, 
white as ashes, dense as showers of driven steel ; 
the pillars of it full of ghastly life ; Rain-Furies, 
shrieking as they fly ;— scourging, as with whips of 
scorpions ;— the earth ringing and trembling under 
them, heaven wailing wildly, the trees stooped 
blindly down, covering their faces, quivering in 
every leaf with horror, ruin of their branches fly- 
ing by them like black stubble.— J/bcZeni Painters. 
v., p. 156. 



470 • A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

The Miracles of Ice and Frost.— Every crys- 
talline substance has a brick of a particular form 
to build with, usually, in some angle or modification 
of angle, quite the minei-al's own special property 
— and if not absolutely peculiar to it, at least pecu- 
liarly used by it. Thus, though the brick of gold, 
and that of the ruby-colored oxide of copj)er, are 
alike cubes, yet gold gi'ows trees with its bricks, 
and ruby copper weaves samite with them. Gold 
cannot plait samite, nor ruby copper branch into 
trees ; and ruby itself, with a far more convenient 
and adajDtable form of brick, does neither the one 
nor the other. But ice, which has the same form 
of bricks to build with as ruby, can, at its pleasure, 
bind them into branches, or weave them into wool ; 
buttress a polar cliff with adamant, or flush a 
dome of Alp with light lovelier than the ruby's. — 
Deucalion, p. 220. 

Icicles, and all other such accretions of ice formed 
by additions at the surface, by flowing or dropping 
water, are always, Avhen unaffected by irregular 
changes of temperature or other disturbing acci- 
dents, composed of exquisitely transparent vitreous 
ice (the water of course being supposed transparent 
to begin with) — compact, flawless, absolutely smooth 
at the surface, and presenting on the fracture, to 
the naked eye, no evidence Avhatever of crystalline 
structure. They will enclose living leaves of holly, 
fern, or ivy, without disturbing one fold or fringe 
of them, in clear jelly (if one may use the word of 
anything frozen so hard), like the dantiest candy- 
ings by Parisian confectioner's art, over glace fruit, 
or like the fixed juice of the white currant in the 
pei'fect confiture of Bar-le-Duc ; — and the frozen 
gelatine melts, as it forms, stealthily, serenely, 
showing no vestige of its crystalline power ; push- 
ing nowhere, pulling nowhere ; revealing in disso- 
lution, no secrets of its structure ; affecting flexile 
bi'anches and foliage only by its weight, and letting 
them rise when it has passed away, as they rise after 
being bow-ed under rain. 



NATURE AND LITER ATUIiE-NA TUBE. 



^<5»:ij 



A small cascade, falling lightly, and shattering 
itself only into drops, will always do beautiful 
things, and often incomprehensible ones. After 
some fortnight or so of clear frost in one of our 
recent hard winters at Coniston, a fall of about 
twenty-five feet in the stream of Leathes-water, 
beginning with general glass basket-making out of 
all the light grasses at its sides, built for itself at 
last a complete veil or vault of finely interwoven 
ice. under which it might be seen, when the em- 
broidery was finished, falling tranquilly: its strength 
being then too far subdued to spoil by overloading 
or over-laboring the poised traceries of its incandes- 
cent canopy. — Deucalion, pp. 217-319. 

The Earth-veil.— The earth in its depths must 
remain dead and cold, incapable except of slow 
crystalline change; but at its surface, which human 
beings look upon and deal with, it ministers to 
them through a veil of strange intermediate being ; 
which breathes, but has no voice ; moves, but can- 
not leave its appointed place ; passes through life 
without consciousness, to death Avithout bitterness; 
wears the beauty of youth, v»dthout its passion ; 
and declines to the weakness of age, without Its 
regret. 

And in this mystery of intermediate being, en- 
tirely subordinate to us, with which we can deal as 
we choose, having just the greater power as we 
have the less responsibility for ourtreatment of the 
unsuffering creature, most of the pleasures which 
we need from the external world are gathered, and 
most of the lessons we need are written, all kinds 
of precious grace and teaching being united in this 
link between the Earth and Man : wonderful in 
universal adai)tation to his need, desire, and disci- 
pline ; God's daily preparation of the earth for him, 
with beautiful nieans of life. First a carpet to 
make it soft for him ; then, a colored fantasy of 
embroidery thereon ; then, tall spreading of foliage 
to shade him from sun-heat, and shade also the 
fallen rain, that it may not dry quickly back into 



:it< A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

the clouds, but stay to nourish the springs among 
the moss. Stout wood to bear this leafage : easily 
to be cut, yet tough and light, to make houses for 
him, or instruments (lance-shaft, or plough-handle, 
according to his temi^er) ; useless it had been, if 
harder; useless, if less fibrous; useless, if less 
elastic. Winter comes, and the shade of leafage 
falls away, to let the sun warm the earth ; the 
strong boughs remain, breaking the strength of 
winter winds. The seeds which are to prolong the 
race, innumerable according to the need, are made 
beautiful and palatable, varied into infinitude of 
-appeal to the fancy of man, or provision for his 
service : cold juice, or glowing spice, or balm, or 
incense, softening oil, perserving resin, medicine of 
styptic, febrifuge, or lulling charm : and all these 
presented in forms of endless change. Fragility or 
force, softness and strength, in all degrees and as- 
pects ; unerring uprightness, as of temple pillars, 
or undivided wandering of feeble tendrils on the 
ground ; mighty resistances of rigid arm and limb 
to the storms of ages, or wavings to and fro with 
faintest pulse of summer streamlet. Roots cleav- 
ing the strength of rock, or binding the transcience 
of the sand ; crests basking in sunshine of the 
desert, or hiding by dripping spring and lightless 
cave ; foliage far tossing in entangled fields, be- 
neath every wave of ocean — clothing with varie- 
gated, everlasting films, the peaks of the trackless 
mountains, or ministering at cottage doors to every 
gentlest j)assion and simplest joy of humanity. — 
Moder7i Painters, V., pp. 6-17. 

Branches and Leaves. — Branches float on the 
wind more than they yield to it; and in their tossing 
do not so much bend under a force, as rise on a 
wave, which penetrates in liquid threads through 
all their sprays. — Modern Painters, V., p. 79. 

Caprice is an essential source of branch beauty: 
being in reality the written story of all the branch's 
life — of the theories it formed, the accidents it suf- 
fered, the fits of enthusiasm to which it yielded ixx 



NATUPxE AND LIT Eli ATURE— NATURE. 473 

certain delicious warm springs ; tlie disgusts at 
weeks of east wind, the mortifications of itself for 
its friends' sakes ; or the sudden and successful in- 
ventions of neAV ways of getting out to the sun. — 
Modern Painters, V., p. 84. 

Paint a leaf indeed ! Above-named Titian has 
done it: Correggio, moreover, and Giorgione : and 
Leonardo, very nearly, trying hard. Holbein, three 
or four times, in precious pieces, highest wrought. 
Raphael, it may be, in one or two crowns of Muse 
or Sibyl. If any one else, in later times, we have 
to consider. — Modern Painters, \., p. 49. 

The leaves of the herbage at our feet take all 
kinds of strange shapes, as if to invite us to ex- 
amine them. Star-shajoed, heart-shaped, spear- 
shaped, arrow-shaped, fretted, fringed, cleft, fur- 
rowed, serrated, sinuated ; in whorls, in tufts, in 
spires, in wreaths endlessly expressive, deceptive, 
fantastic, never the same from footstalk to blossoiu ; 
they seem perpetually to tempt our watchfulness, 
and take delight in outstripping our wonder. And 
observe, their forms are such as will not be visibly 
injured by crushing. Their complexity is already 
disorded : jags and rents are their laws of being ; 
rent by the footstep they betray no harm. — Modern 
Painters, V., p. 109. 

By a power of which I believe no sufficient ac- 
count exists, as each leaf adds to the thickness of 
the shoot, so each shoot to the branch, so each 
branch to the stem, and that with so perfect an 
order and regularity of duty, that from every leaf 
in all the countless crowd at tlie tree's summit, one 
slender fibre, or at least fibre's thickness of wood, 
descends through shoot, through spray, through 
branch, and through stem ; and having thus added, 
in its due proportion, to form the strength of the 
tree, laboi's yet farther and more painfully to pro- 
vide for its security ; and thrusting forward into 
the root, loses nothing of its miiihty energy, until, 
mining through the darkness, it has taken hold in 
cleft of rock or depth of earth, as extended as the 
sweep of its green crest in the free air. . . . 



474 A EUSKIJSr ANTHOLOGY. 

These ridges, which rib the shoot so distinctly, 
are not on the ascending jiart of it. They are the 
contributions of eacli successive leaf thrown out as 
it ascended. Every leaf sent down a slender cord, 
covering and clinging to the shoot beneath, and in- 
creasing its thickness. Each, according to his size 
and strength, wore his little strand of cable, as a 
spider his thread ; and cast it down the side of the 
sijringing tower by a marvellous magic — irresisti^ 
ble ! The fall of a granite pyramid from an Alp 
may perhaps be stayed ; the descending force of 
that silver thread shall not be stayed. It will split 
the rocks themselves at its roots, if need be, rather 
than fail in its work. — 3Iodern Painters, V., 
pp. 55, 57. 

Every single leaf-cluster presents the general as- 
pect of a little family, entirely at unity among 
themselves, but obliged to get their living by va- 
rious shifts, concessions, and infringements of the 
family rules, in order not to invade the privileges 
of other peo^^le in their neigliborhood. And in the 
arrangement of these concessions there is an exquis- 
ite sensibility among the leaves. They do not grow 
each to his own liking, till they run against one 
another, and then turn back suVk>ly ; but by a 
watchful instinct, far apart, tliey anticipate their 
companions' coui'ses, as ships M sea, and in every 
new unfolding of their edgt^d tissue, guide them- 
selves by the sense of eacp other's remote j^resence, 
and by a watchful penetration of leafy purj^ose in 
the far future. iSo that every shadow which one 
casts on the next, ind every glint of sun which each 
reflects to the next, and every touch which in toss 
of stovm each receives from the next, aid or arrest 
the development of their advancing form, and di- 
rect, as will be safest and best, the curve of every 
fold and the current of every vein. — Modern Paint- 
ers, v., pp. 46, 47. 

To conclude, then, we find that the beauty of 
these buildings of the leaves consists, from the first 
fitep of it to the last, in its showingtheir jjerfect fel- 



NATURE AND LITERATURE—NATURE. 475 

lowship ; and a single aim uniting them under cir- 
cumstances of various distress, trial, and pleasure. 
Without the fellowship, no beauty ; without the 
steady purpose, no beauty ; without trouble and 
death, no beauty ; without individual pleasure, 
freedom, and caprice, so far as mav be consistent 
Avith the universal good, no beauty. 

Tree-loveliness might be thus lost or killed in 
many ways. Discordance would kill it — of one leaf 
with another ; disobedience would kill it — of any 
leaf to the ruling law ; indulgence would kill it, 
and the doing away with pain ; or slavisli symme- 
try would kill it. and the doing away with deliglit. 
— Modern Painters, V., p. 88. 

Flowers. — All plants are composed of essen- 
tially two parts — the leaf and root ; one loving the 
light, the other darkness ; one liking to be clean, 
the other to be dirty ; one liking to grow for the 
most part up, the other for the most part down ; 
and each having faculties and purposes of its own. 
But the pure one, which loves the light, has, above 
all things, the purpose of being mai'ried to another 
leaf, and having child-leaves, and children's chil- 
dren of leaves, to make the earth fair for ever. And 
when the leaves marry, they put on wedding-robes, 
and are more glorious than Solomon in all his glory, 
and they have feasts of honey, and we call them 
"Flowers."— For6% I., p. 63. 

Few people care about flowers. Many, indeed, 
are fond of finding a new shape of blossom, caring 
for it as a child cares about a kaleidoscope. Many, 
also, like a fair service of flowers in the greenhouse, 
as a fair service of plate on the table. Many are 
scientificallj^ interested in them, though even these 
in the nomenclature rather than the flowers. And 
a few enjoy their gardens : but I have never heard 
of a piece of land, which would let well on a build- 
ing lease, remaining unlet because it was a flowery 
piece. I have never heard of parks being kept for 
wild hyacinths, though often of their being kept for 
wild beasts. And the blossoming time of the year 



476 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

being principally spring, I perceive it to be the mind 
of most people, during tliat period, to stay in 
towns. . . . 

Flowers seem intended for the solace of ordinary 
humanity: children love them; quiet, tender, con- 
tented ordinary people love them as they grow ; 
luxurious and disorderly people rejoice in them 
gathered : They are the cottager's treasure ; and in 
the crowded town, mark, as with a little broken 
fragment of rainbow, the windows of the w^orkers 
in whose heart rests the covenant of peace. Pas- 
sionate or religious minds contemplate them with 
fond, feverish intensity ; the affection is seen se- 
verely calm in the works of many old religious 
l^ainters, and mixed with more open and true 
country sentiment in those of our own pre-K.a- 
phaelites. To the child and the girl, the peasant 
and the manufacturing operative, to the grisette 
and the nun, the lover and monk, they are pre- 
cious always. But to the men of supreme power 
and thoughtfulness, precious only at times ; sym- 
bolically and pathetically often to the poets, but 
rarely for their own sake. They fall forgotten 
from the great workmen's and soldiers' hands. 
Such men will take, in thankfulness, crowns of 
leaves, or crowns of thorns — not crowns of 
flowers. 

A curious fact, this ! Here are men whose lives 
are spent iia the study of color, and the one thing 
they will not paint is a flower ! Anything but that. 
A furred mantle, a jewelled zone, a silken gown, a 
brazen corslet, nay, an old leathern chair, or a 
wall-paper if you will, with utmost care and de- 
light ;— but a flower by no manner of means, if 
avoidable. When the thing has perforce to be 
done, the great painters of course do it rightly. 
Titian, in his eai-ly work, sometimes carries a blos- 
som or two out with affection, as the columbines in 
our Bacchus and Ariadne. So also Holbein. But 
in his later and mightier work, Titian will only 
paint a fan or a wristband intensely, never a flower. 
The utuiost that Turner ever allows in his fore- 



NATCRE AND LITERATURE— NATURE. 477 

grounds is a Wcitev-lily or two, a cluster of heath 
or fox<ilove, a thistle sometimes, a violet or daisy, 
or a l)iud\veed-bell; just enough to lead the eye into 
the understanding of the rich mystery of his more 
distant leafage.— J/ocZer?^ Painters, V., pp- 104-108. 

The Pine Tree.— Ahnost the only pleasure I 
have myself in re-reading my okl books is my sense 
of having at least done justice to the ]i\x\ii.— Frondes 
Ayrestes, p- 28. 

When the sun rises behind a ridges of pines, and 
those pines are seen from a distance of a mile or 
two, against his light, the whole foruj of the tree, 
trunk, branches, and all, becomes one frostwork 
of intensely brilliant silver, which is relieved against 
the clear sky like a burning fringe, for some dis- 
tance on either side of the s\xn.— Stones of Venice, 
I., p. 345. 

The pine is trained to need nothing, and to endure 
everything. It is resolvedly whole, self-contained, 
desiring nothing but rightness, content with re- 
stricted completion. Tall or short, it will be 
straight. Small or large, it will be round. It may 
be permitted to these soft lowland trees that they 
should make themselves gay with show of blossom, 
and glad with pretty charities of fruitfulness. We 
builders with the sword have harder work to do 
for man, and must do it in close-set troops. To 
stay the sliding of the mountain snows, which 
would bury him ; to hold in divided drops, at our 
sword-points, the rain, which would sweep away 
him and his treasure-fields ; to nurse in shade 
among our brown fallen leaves the tricklings that 
feed the brooks in drought ; to give massive shield 
against the winter wind, which shrieks through the 
bare branches of the plain :— such service must 
we do him steadfastly Avhile we live. Our bodies, 
also, are at his service : softer than the bodies of 
other trees, though our toil is harder than theirs. — 
Modern Painters, V-, p. 95. 

1 can never without awe stav long under a great 



il9, 'A tiUSKtN ANTHOLOGY. 

Alpine cliff, far from all house or work of men, 
looking up to its companies of pine, as they stand 
on the inaccessible juts and perilous ledges of the 
enormous wall, in quiet multitudes, each like the 
shadow of the one beside it — upright, fixed, spec- 
tral, as troops of ghosts standing on the walls of 
Hades, not knowing each other — dumb for ever. 
You cannot reach them, cannot cry to them; — those 
trees never heard human voice ; they are far above 
all sound but of the winds. No foot ever stirred fallen 
leaf of theirs. All comfortless they stand, between 
the two eternities of the Vacancy and the Rock : 
yet with such iron will, that the rock itself looks 
bent and shattered beside them — fragile, weak, in- 
consistent, compared to their dark energy of deli- 
cate life, and monotony of enchanted pride : — 
unnumbered, unconquerable. — Modern Painters, 
v., p. 96. 

A pine cannot be represented by a round stroke, 
nor by an upright one, nor even by an angular one; 
no conventionalism will express a pine ; it must be 
legitimately drawn, with a light side and a dark 
side, and a soft gradation from the top downwards, 
or it does not look like a pine at all. Most artists 
think it not desirable to choose a subject which in- 
volves the drawing of ten millions of trees ; be- 
cause, supposing they could even do four or five in 
a minute, and worked for ten hours a day, their 
Ijicture would still take them ten years befoie they 
had finished its pine forests. For this, and other 
similar reasons, it is declared usually that Switzer- 
land is ugly and unpicturesque ; but that is not so; 
it is only that loe cannot paint it. If we could, it 
would be as interesting on the canvas as it is in re- 
ality ; and a painter of fruit and flowers might just 
as well call a human figure unpicturesque, because 
it was to him unmanageable, as the ordinary land- 
scape-effect painter speak in depreciation of the 
Alps. — Modern Painters, IV., p. 311. 

The Northern peoples, century after century, 
lived under one or other of the two great powers of 



NATURE AND LtTSRATURE-NATURE. 479 

the Pine and the Sea, both infinite. They dwelt 
amidst the forests, as they wandered on the waves, 
and saw no end, nor any other horizon ;— still the 
dark green trees, or the dark green waters, jagged 
the dawn with their fringe, or their foam. And 
whatever elements of imagination, or of wari'ior 
strength, or of dome.stic justice, were brought down 
by the Norwegian and the Goth against the disso- 
luteness or degradation of the South of Europe, 
were taught them under the green roofs and wild 
penetralia of the pine. — Modern Painters, V., 
p. 100. 

The Cereal Grasses. — We find another element 
of very complex effect added to the others which 
exist in tented plants, namely, that of minute, 
granular, feathery, or downy seed-vessels, mingling 
quaint brown punctuation, and dusty tremors of 
dancing grain, with the bloom of the nearer fields ; 
and casting a gossamered grayness and softness of 
plumy mist along their surfaces far away ; myste- 
rious evermore, not only with dew in the morning 
or mirage at noon, but with the shaking threads of 
fine arborescence, each a little belfry of grain-bells, 
all a-chime. — 3Ioder7i Painters, V., p. 113. 

A Blade op Grass. — Gather a single blade of 
grass and examine for a minute, quietly, its narrow 
sword-shaped strip of fluted green. Nothing, as it 
seems there, of notable goodness or beauty. A very 
little strength, and a very little tallness, and a_few 
delicate long lines meeting in a point, — not a per- 
fect point neither, but blunt and unfinished, by no 
means a creditable or apj)arently much cared-for 
example of Nature's workmanship ; made, as it 
seems, only to be trodden on to-day, and to-mor- 
row to be cast into the oven ; and a little pale and 
hollow stalk, feeble and flaccid, leading down to the 
dull brown fibres of roots. And yet, think of it 
well, and judge whether of all the gorgeous flowers 
that beam in summer air, and of all strong and 
goodly trees, pleasant to the eyes and good for food 
— stately palm and pine, strong ash and oak, 



480 A RUSKtK ANTHOLOGY. 

scented citron, burdened vine — there be any by 
man so deeply loved, by God so highly graced, as 
that narrow point of feeble green. It seems to me 
not to have been without a peculiar significance, 
that our Lord, when about to work the miracle 
which, of all that He showed, aj^pears to have been 
felt by the multitude as the most impressive — tlie 
miracle of tlie loaves — commanded the people to sit 
down by companies " upon the green grass." He 
was about to feed them with the princijaal produce 
of eartli and the sea, the simplest representations 
of the food of mankind. He gave tliem the seed of 
the herb ; He bade them sit down upon the herb 
itself, which was as great a gift, in its fitness for 
their joy and rest, as its perfect fruit for their sus- 
tenance ; thus, in this single order and act, when 
rightly understood, indicating for evermore liow the 
Creator had entrusted the comfort, consolation, and 
sustenance of man, to the simjjlest and most de- 
spised of all tlie leafy families of the eartli. 

And Avell does it fulfil its mission. Consider wliat 
we owe merely to the meadow grass, to the covering 
of the dark ground by that glorious enamel, by the 
companies of tliose soft, and countless, and peace- 
ful spears. The fields ! Follow but forth for a lit- 
tle time the thouglits of all that we ought to recog- 
nize in those Avords. All spring and summer is in 
them — the walks by silent, scented jiaths — the rests 
in noonday heat — the joy of herds and flocks — tlie 
power of all shepherd life and meditation — the life 
of sunlight upon the world, falling in emerald 
streaks, and falling in soft blue shadows, where 
else it would liave struck upon tlie dark inould, or 
seorcliing dust — pastures beside the pacing brooks 
— soft banks and knolls of lowly hills — thymy slopes 
of down overlooked by the blue line of lifted sea, — 
crisp lawns all dim with early dew, or smooth in 
evening warmth of barred sunshine, dinted by 
happy feet, and softening in their fall the sound of 
loving voices : all these are summed in those simple 
words ; and these are not all. 

We may not measure to the full the depth of this 



MATURE AND LITERATURE-NATrUE. 481 

heavenly gift, in our own land ; though still, as we 
think of it longer, the infinite of that meadow 
sweetness, Shakespeare's peculiar joy, would open 
on us more and more, yet we have it but in part. 
Go out, in the spring time, among the meadows 
that slope from the shores of the Swiss lakes to the 
roots of their lower mountains. There, mingled 
with the taller gentians and the white narcissus, 
the grass grows deep and free; and as you follow the 
winding mountain paths, beneath arching boughs 
all veiled and dim with blossom — paths that forever 
droop and rise over the green banks and mounds 
sweejiing down in scented undulation, steep to the 
blue water, studded hei'e and therewith new-mown 
heaps, filling all the air with fainter sweetness — 
look up towards the higher hills, whei-e the waves 
of everlasting green roll silently into their long- 
inlets among the shadows of the pines; and we may, 
perhaps, at last know the meaning of those quiet 
words of the 147th Psalm, "He raaketh grass to 
grow upon the mountains." — Modern Painters, III., 
pp. 347-349. 

LiCHE>'s OF THE RoCK. — It is Strange to think ot 
the gradually diminished power and withdrawn 
freedom among the orders of leaves — from the sweep 
of the chestnut and gadding of the vine, down to 
the close-shrinking trefoil, and contented daisy, 
pressed on earth ; and, at last, to the leaves that 
are not merely close to earth, but themselves a part 
of it; fastened down to it by their sides, here and 
there only a wrinkled edge rising from the granite 
crystals. . . . They will not be gathered, like the 
flowers, for chaplet or love-token ; but of these the 
wild bird will make its nest, and the Avearied child 
his pillow. 

And, as the earth's first mercy, so they are its last 
gift to us. AVhen all other service is vain, from 
plant and tree, the soft mosses and gray lichen take 
up their watch by the head-stone. The woods, the 
blossoms, the gift-bearing grasses, have done their 
imrts for a time, but these do service for ever. 



482 A BUSKIN- ANTHOLOGY. 

Trees for the builder's yard, flowers for the bride's 
chamber, corn for the granary, moss for the grave. 
. . . Sharing the stillness of the unimpassioned 
rock, they share also its endurance ; and while 
the winds of departing spring scatter the white 
hawthorn blossom like drifted snow, and summer 
dims on the parched meadow the drooping of its 
cowslip-gold, — far above, among the mountains, the 
silver lichen-spots, rest, starlike, on the stone ; and 
the gathering orange stain upon the edge of yonder 
western peak reflects the sunsets of a thousand 
years. — Modern Painters, V., pp. 116, 117. 



THE SEA. 

Day by day, the morning winds come coursing to 
the shore, every breath of them with a green wave 
rearing before it ; clear, crisp, ringing, merry- 
minded waves, that fall over and over each other, 
laughing like children as they near the beach, and 
at last clash themselves all into dust of crystal over 
the dazzling sweeps of sand. — Stones of Venice, I., 
p. 226. 

The Breaking of a Sea-wave against a Cliff. 
— One moment a flint cave — the next, a marble 
pillar,— the next a fading cloud. — Harbors of 
England. 

The Unshovelled Graves of the Sea.— The 
calm gray abyss of the sea, that has no fury and 
no voice, but is as a grave always open, which the 
green sighing mounds do but hide for an instant as 
they peiss. —Hai'bors of England. 

Moonlight on a swelling Sea. — Let us stand 
on the sea-shore on a cloudless night, with a full 
moon over the sea, and a swell on the water. Of 
course a long line of splendor will be seen on the 
waves under the moon, reaching from the horizon 
to our very feet. But are those waves between the 
moon and us actually more illuminated than any 



NATURE AND LITERATURE— NATURE. 483 

other part of the sea ? Not one whit. The whole 
surface of the seals under the same fulUight, but 
the waves between the moon and us are the only 
ones Avhich are in a position to reflect that light 
to our eyes. The sea on both sides of that path of 
light is in perfect darkness — almost black. But is 
it so from shadow ? Not so, for there is nothing to 
intercept the moonlight from it : it is so from posi- 
tion, because it cannot reflect any of the rays Avhich 
fall on it to our eyes, but reflects instead the dark 
vault of the night sky. Both the darkness and the 
light on it, therefore— and they are as violently con- 
trasted as may well be— are nothing but reflections, 
the whole surface of the water being under one 
blaze of moonlight, entirely unshaded by any inter- 
vening object whatsoever.— JL /to ?/J.9 of the Chace, I., 
p. 188. 

" He weigheth the Waters by Measure."— 
Let us go down and stand by the beach of it,— of the 
great irregular sea, and count whether the thunder 
of it is not out of time. One— two :— here comes a 
well-formed wave at last, trembling a little at the 
top, but, on the whole, orderly. So, crash among the 
shingle, and up as far as this grey pebble; now stand 
by and watch ! Another :— Ah, careless wave ! why 
couldn't you haveiiept your crest on ? it is all gone 
away into spray, striking up against the cliffs there-- 
I thought as much— missed the mark by a couple of 
feet ! Another:— How now, impatient one ! couldn't 
you have waited till your friend's reflux was done 
with, instead of rolling yourself up with it in that 
unseemly manner? You go for nothing. A fourth, 
and a goodly one at last. What think we of yonder 
slow rise, and crystalline hollow, without a flaw ? 
Steady, good wave ; not so fast ; not so fast ; where 
are you coming to?— By our architectural word, 
this is to bad ; two yards over the mark, and ever 
so much of you in our face besides ; and a wave 
which we had some hope of, behind there, broken 
all to pieces out at sea, and laying a great white 
table-cloth of foam all the w^ay to the shore, as 
if the marine gods were to dine off it ! Alas, for 



484 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

these unhappy arrow shots of Nature ; she Aviil 
never hit her mark with those unruly waves of 
hers, nor get one of them into the ideal shape, if Ave 
wait for a thousand years. — Stones of Venice, I., 
p. 343. 



THE MOUNTAINS. 

The hills, which, as compared with living beings, 
seem "everlasting," are, in truth, as perishing as 
they : its veins of flowing fountain weary the 
mountain heart, as the crimson pulse does ours ; 
the natural force of the iron crag is abated in its 
appointed time, like the strength of the sinews in a 
human old age; and it is but the lapse of the longer 
years of decay which, in the sight of its Creator, 
distinguishes the mountain range from the moth 
and the worm. — Modern Painters, IV., p. 152. 

Dawn on the Mountains. — Wait yet for one 
hour, until the east again becomes purple and the 
heaving mountains, rolling against it in darkness, 
like waves of a wild sea, are drowned one by one 
in the glory of its burning ; watch the white gla- 
ciers blaze in their winding paths about the moun- 
tains, like mighty serpents with scales of fire ; 
watch the columnar peaks of solitary snow, kind- 
ling downwards, chasm by chasm, each in itself a 
new morning ; their long avalanches cast down in 
keen streams brighter than the lightning, sending 
each bis tribute of driven snow, like altar-smoke, up 
to the heaven ; the rose-light of their silent domes 
flushing that heaven about them and above them, 
piercing Avith purer light through its purple lines of 
lifted cloud, casting a new glory on every wreath 
as it passes by, until the Avhole heaven — one scarlet 
canopy — is interwoven Avith a roof of Avaving f^auie, 
and tossing, vault beyond vault, as Avith the drifted 
wings of many companies of angels ; and then, 
when you can look no more for gladness, and when 
you are bowed doAvn with fear and loA'^e of the 
Maker and Doer of this, tell me who has best de- 



NATURE AND LITERATURE— NATURE. 485 

Jlvered this His message unto men ! — Modern Paint- 
ers, I., p. 341. 

MoR^"ING ijf THE MouNTAI^^s.— Level lines of 
dewy mist lay stretched along the valley, out of 
which rose the massy mountains— their lower cliffs 
in pale gray shadow, hardly distinguishable from 
the floating vapor, but gradually ascending till 
they caught the sunlight, which ran in sharp 
touches of ruddy color along the angular crags, 
and pierced, in long level rays, through their 
fringes of spear-like pine. Far above, shot up red 
splintered masses of castellated rock, jagged and 
shivered into myriads of fantastic forms, with here 
and there a streak of sunlit snow, traced down their 
chasms like a line of forked lightning ; and, far be- 
yond, and far above all these, fainter than the 
Hiorning cloud, but purer, and changeless, slept, in 
the blue sky, the utmost peaks of the eternal snow. 
—King of the Golden River, p. 36. 

Distance lends Enchantment.— It is, in reality, 
better for mankind that the forms of their common 
landscape should offer no violent stimulus to the 
emotions ; that the gentle upland, browned by the 
bending furrows of the jjlough, and the fresh sweep 
of the chalk down, and the narrow winding of the 
copse-clad dingle, should be more frequent scenes 
of human life than the Arcadias of cloud-capped 
mountain or luxuriant vale; and that, while hum- 
bler (though always infinite) sources of interest are 
given to each of us around the homes to which we 
are restrained for the greater part of our lives, these 
mightier and stranger glories should become the 
objects of adventure — at once the cynosures of the 
fancies of childhood, and themes of the happy mem- 
ory, and the winter's tale of age. — Modern Painters, 
IV., p. 14.5. 

The Uses op Mountains.— It is not, in reality, a 
degrading, but a true, large, and ennobling view of 
the mountain ranges of tl-.e world, if we compare 
them to heaps of fertile and fresh earth, laid up by 
a prudent gardener beside his garden beds, whence, 



486 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

at intervals, he casts on them some scattering of new 
and virgin ground. That which we so often lament 
as convulsion or destruction is nothing else than 
the momentary shaking of the dust from the spade. 
The winter floods, which inflict a temporary devas- 
tation, bear Avith them the elements of succeeding 
fertility; the fruitful field is covered with sand and 
shingle in momentary judgment, but in enduring- 
mercy; and the great river, which chokes its mouth 
with marsh, and tosses terror along its shore, is but 
scattering the seeds of the harvest of futurity, and 
preparing the seats of unborn generations. — Modern 
Painters, IV., p. 111. 

The first use of mountains is of course to give 
motion to water. Evei-y fountain and river, from 
the inch-deep streamlet that crosses the village 
lane in trembling clearness, to the massy and silent 
march of the everlasting multitude of waters in 
Amazon or Ganges, owe their play, and purity, and 
power, to the ordained elevations of the earth, 
(jrentle or steep, extended or abrupt, some deter- 
mined slope of the earth's surface is of course 
necessary, before any wave can so much as over- 
take one sedge in its pilgrimage. 

And how seldom do we enough consider, as we 
walk beside the margins of our pleasant brooks, 
how beautiful and wonderful is that ordinance, of 
which every blade of grass that waves in their clear 
water is a perpetual sign ; that the dew and rain 
fallen on the face of the earth shall find no resting- 
place ; shall find, on the contrary, fixed channels 
traced for them, from the ravines of the central 
crests down which they roar in sudden ranks of 
foam, to the dark hollows beneath the banks of low- 
land pasture, round which they must circle slowly 
among the stems and beneath the leaves of the lilies; 
paths prepared for them, by which, at some ap- 
pointed rate of journey, they must evermore de- 
scend, sometimes sIoav and sometimes swift, but 
never pausing ; the daily portion of the earth they 
have to glide over marked for them at each succes- 



NATURE AND LITERATURE— NATURE. 487 

si ve sunrise, the place which has known them know- 
ing them no more, and the gateways of guarding 
mountains opened for them in cleft and chasm, 
none letting them in their pilgrimage ; and, from 
far off, the great heart of the sea calling them to 
itself ! Deep calleth unto dee^.— Modern Painters, 
IV., p. 107. 

The great mountains lift the lowlands on their 
sides. Let the readei- imagine, first, the appearance 
of the most varied plain of some richly cultivated 
country ; let him imagine it dark with graceful 
woods, and soft with deepest pastures ; let him fill 
the space of it, to the utmost horizon, with innum- 
erable and changeful incidents of scenery and life ; 
leading pleasant streamlets through its meadows, 
strewing clusters of cottages beside their banks, 
tracing sweet footpaths through its avenues, and 
animating its fields with happy flocks, and slow 
wandering spots of cattle ; and when he has wea- 
ried himself with endless imagining, and left no space 
without some lovelinf^ss of its own, let him conceive 
all this great plain, Avith its infinite treasures of 
natural beauty and happy human life, gathered up 
in God's hands from one edge of the horizon to the 
other like a woven garment; and shaken into deep, 
falling folds, as the robes droop from a king's 
shoulders; all its bright rivers leaping into cataracts 
along the hollows of its fall, and all its forests rear- 
ing themselves aslant against its slopes, as a rider 
rears himself back when his horse lilunges ; and all 
its villages nestling themselves into the new wind- 
ings of its glens ; and all its pastures thrown into 
steep waves of greensward, dashed Avith dew along 
the edges of their folds, and sweeping down into 
endless slopes, with a cloud here and there lying 
quietly, half on the grass, half in the air; and he 
will have as yet, in all this lifted world, only the 
foundation of one of the great Alps. And whatever 
is lovely in the lowland scenery becomes lovelier in 
this change : the trees which grew heavily and 
stiffly from the level line of plain assume strange 



488 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

curves of strength and grace as they bend theui' 
selves against the mountain side ; they breatlie 
more freely, and toss their branches more carelessly 
as each climbs higher, looking to the clear light 
above the topmost leaves of its brother tree : the 
flowers which on the arable plain fell befoi-e the 
plough, now find out for themselves unapproach- 
able places, where year by year they gather into 
happier fellowship, and fear no evil ; and the 
streams which in the level land ci*ept in dark eddies 
by unwholesome banks, now move in showers of 
silver, and are clothed with rainbows, and bring 
health and life wherever the glance of their waves 
can resich.— Modern Painters, IV., p. 106. 

The Difficulty of drawing a Mountain.— 
Nothing is more curious than the state of embarrass- 
ment into which the unfortunate artist must soon 
be cast when he endeavors honestly to draw the 
face of the simplest mountain clitf — ^say a thousand 
feet high, and two or three miles distant. It is full 
of exquisite details, all seemingly decisive and clear; 
but when he tries to arrest one of them, he cannot 
see it — cannot find where it begins or ends — and 
presently it runs into another ; and then he tries 
to draw that, but that will not be drawn, neither, 
until it has conducted him to a third, which, some- 
how or another, made part of the first ; presently 
he finds that, instead of three, there are in reality 
four, and then he loses his place altogether. He 
tries to draw clear lines, to make his work look 
craggy, but finds that then it is too hard ; he tries 
to draw soft lines, and it is immediately too soft ; 
he draws a curved line, and instantly sees it should 
have been straight ; a straight one, and finds Avhen 
he looks up again, that it has got curved while he 
was drawing it. There is nothing for him but de- 
spair, or some sort of abstraction and short-hand 
for cliff. Then the only question is, what is the 
wisest abstraction; and out of the multitude of lines 
that cannot altogether be interpreted, w^hich are 
the really dominant ones ; so that if we cannot give 



NATURE AND LITERATURE-NATURE. 4S9 

the whole, we may at least give what Avill convey 
the most important facts about the aWn.— Modern 
Painters, IV., p. 20G. 

The Matterhorx.— Unlike the Chamouni aig- 
uilles, there is no aspect of destruction about the 
Matterhorn cliffs. They are not torn remnants of 
separating spires, yielding flake by flake, and band 
by band, to the continual process of decay. They 
are, on the contrary, an unaltered monument, 
seemingly sculptured long ago, the huge walls re- 
taining yet the forms into which they Avere first 
engraven, and standing like an Egyptian temple— 
delicate-fronted, softly colored, the suns of un- 
counted ages rising and falling upon it continually, 
but still casting the same line of shadows from east 
to west, still, century after century, touching the 
same purple stains on the lotus pillars ; while the 
desert sand ebbs and flows about their feet, as those 
autumn leaves of rock lie heaped and weak about 
the base of the Cevyiri.— Modern Painters, IV., 
p. 357. 

MouxT Cervix.— It has been falsely represented 
as a peak or tower. It is a vast ridged promontory, 
connected at its western root with the Dent d'Erin, 
and lifting itself, hke a rearing horse, with its face to 
the east. All the way along the flank of it, for half 
a day's journey on the Zmutt glacier, the grim black 
terraces of its foundations range almost without a 
break ; and the clouds, when their day's work h 
done, and they are weary, lay themselves down on 
those foundation steps, and rest till dawn, each 
with his leagues of gray mantle stretched along the 
grisly ledge, and the cornice of the mighty wall 
gleaming in the" moonlight, three thousand feet 
Sihoye.— Stones of Venice, I., p. 69. 

Higher up, the ice opens into broad white fields 
and furrows, hard and di-y, scarcely fissured at all, 
except just under the Cervin, and forming a silent 
and solemn causeway, paved, as it seems, Avith 
white marble from side to side ; broad enough for 
the march of an army in line of battle, but quiet as 



490 A BUS KIN ANTHOLOGY. 

a street of tombs in a buried city, and bordered on 
each hand by ghostly cliffs of that faint granite 
purple which seems, in its far-away height, as un- 
substantial as the dai'k blue that bounds it ;— the 
whole scene so changeless and soundless ; so re- 
moved, not merely from the presence of men, but 
even from their thoughts ; so destitute of all life of 
tree or herb, and so immeasurable in its lonely 
brightness of majestic death, that it looks like a 
world from which not only the human, but the 
spiritual, presences had perished, and the last of its 
archangels, building the great mountains for their 
monuments, had laid themselves down in the sun- 
light to an eternal rest, each in his white shroud. — 
Modern Painters, IV., p. 255. 

An Arcadian Valley.— I do not know any dis- 
trict possessing more pure or uninterrupted fulness 
of mountain character (and that of the highest 
order), or which aj^pears to have been less dis- 
turbed by foreign agencies, than that which bor- 
ders the course of the Trient between Valorsine and 
Martigny. 

The paths which lead to it out of the valley of the 
Rhone, rising at first in steej) circles among the 
walnut trees, like winding stairs among the pillars 
of a Gothic tower, retire over the shoulders of the 
hills into a valley almost unknown, but thickly in- 
habited by an industrious and patient population. 
Along the ridges of the rocks, smoothed by old gla- 
ciers into long, dark, billowy swellings, like the 
backs of plunging dolphins, the peasant watches 
the slow coloring of the tufts of moss and roots of 
herb which, little by little, gathei: a feeble soil over 
the iron substance ; then, supporting the narrow 
strip of clinging ground with a few stones, he sub- 
dues it to the spade ; and in a year or two a little 
crest of corn is seen waving upon the rocky casque. 
The irregular meadows run in and out like inlets 
of lake among these harvested rocks, sweet with 
perpetual streamlets, that seem always to have 
chosen the steepest places to come down, for the 



NATURE AND LITERATURE— NAT UBE. 491 

sake of the leaps, scattering tlieii* handfuls of crys- 
tals this way and that, as the wind takes them, with 
all the grace, but with none of the formalism, of 
fountains; dividing into fanciful change of dash 
and spring, j^et with the seal of their granite chan- 
nels upon them, as the lightest play of human 
speech may bear the seal of past toil, and closing 
back out of their spray to lave the rigid angles, and 
brighten with silver fringes and glassy films each 
lower and lower step of sable stone ; until at last, 
gathered all together again— except, perhaps, some 
chance drops caught on the apple-blossom, where it 
has bvidded a little nearer the cascade than it did 
last spring — they find their way down to the turf, 
and lose themselves in that silently ; with quiet 
depth of clear Avater furrowing among the grass 
blades, and looking only like their shadow, but 
presently emerging again in little startled gushes 
and laughing hurries, as if they had remembered 
suddenly that the day was too short for them to get 
down the hill.— 3Iod€ru Painters, IV., p. 340. 

Slaty Precipices. — Such precipices are among^ 
the most impi'essive as well as the most really dan- 
gerous of mountain ranges; in many spots inaccess- 
ible with safety either from below or from above ; 
dark in color, robed with everlasting mourning, for 
ever tottering like a great fortress shaken by war, 
fearful as much in their weakness as in their 
strength, and yet gathered after every fall into 
darker frowns and unhumiliated threatening; for 
ever incapable of comfort or of healing from herb 
or flower, nourishing no root in their crevices, 
touched by no hue of life on buttress or ledge, but, 
to the utmost, desolate ; knowing no shaking of 
leaves in the wind, nor of grass beside the stream ; 
no motion but their own mortal shivering, the 
deathful crunabling of atom from atom in their 
corruioting stones ; knowing no sound of living 
voice or living tread, cheei'ed neither by the kid's 
bleat nor the marmot's cry ; haunted only by un- 
interrupted echoes from far off, wandering hither 



492 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

and thither among their Avails, iTnahle to escape, 
and by the hiss of angry torrents, and sometimes 
the shriek of a bird that flits near the face of them, 
and sweeps frightened back from under their sha- 
dow into the gulf of air: and, sometimes, when the 
echo has fainted, and the wind has carried the 
sound of the torrent away, and the bird has van- 
ished, and the mouldering stones are still for a 
little time — a brown moth, opening and shutting 
its wings upon a grain of dust, may be the only 
thing that moves, or feels, in all the waste of weary 
precipice, darkening five thousand feet of the blue 
depth of heaven. — Modern Painters, IV., p. 261. 

It is almost impossible to make a cottage built in 
a granite country look absolutely miserable. Rough 
it may be ; neglected, cold, full of aspect of hard- 
ship ; but it never can look/owZ; no matter how 
carelessly, how indolently, its inhabitants may live, 
the water at their doors will not stagnate, the soil 
beneath their feet will not allow itself to be trodden 
into slime, the timbers of their fences will not rot; 
they cannot so much as dirty their faces or hands 
if they try ; do the worst they can, thei-e will still 
be a feeling of firm ground under them, and pure 
air about them, and an inherent wholesomeness in 
their abodes Avhich it will need the misery of years 
to conquer. And, as far as I remember, the inhabi- 
tants of granite countries have always a force and 
healthiness of character, more or less abated or mod- 
ified, of course, according to the other circumstances 
of their life, but still definitely belonging to them, 
as distinguished from the inhabitants of the less 
pure districts of the hills.— J/odern Painters; IV., 
p. 126. 

Distance in^eeded for Mouxtain Effects.— Are 
not all natural things, it may be asked, as lovely 
near as far away ? Nay, not so. Look at the 
clouds, and watch the delicate sculpture of their 
alabaster sides, and the rounded lustre of their 
magnificent rolling. They are meant to be beheld 
far away ; they Avere shaped for their place, high 



NATURE AND LITERATURE— NATURE. 493 

above your head; approach theiu, and they fuse 
into vague mists, or whirl away in fierce fragments 
of thunderous vapor. Look at the crest of the 
Alp, from the far-away plains over which its light 
is cast, whence human souls have communion with 
it by their myriads. The child looks up to it in the 
dawn, and the husbandman in the burden and 
heat of the day, and the old man in the going down 
of the sun, and it is to them all as the celestial city 
on the world's horizon ; dyed with the depth of 
heaven, and clothed with the calm of eternity. 
There was it set, for holy dominion, by Him who 
marked for the sun his journey, and bade the moon 
know her going down. It was built for its place in 
the far-off sky ; approach it, and as the sound of 
the voice of man dies away about its foundations, 
and the tide of human life shallowed upon the vast 
aerial shore, is at last met by the Eternal "Here 
shall thy waves be stayed," the glory of its aspect 
fades into blanched fearfulness ; its purple walls 
are rent into grisly rocks, its silver fretwork sad- 
dened into wasting snow, the storm-brands of ages 
are on its breast, the ashes of its own ruin lie sol- 
ennily on its white raiment. — Stones of Venice, I., 
p. 244. 

For every distance from the eye there is a peculiar 
kind of beauty, or a different system of lines of 
form ; the sight of that beauty is reserved for that 
distance, and for that alone. If you approach 
nearer, that kind of beauty is lost, and another suc- 
ceeds, to be disorganized and reduced to strange and 
incomprehensible means and appliances in its turn, 
ff you desire to perceive the great harmonies of the 
form of a rocky mountain, you must not ascend 
upon its sides. All is there disorder and accident, 
or seems so ; sudden starts of its shattered beds 
hither and thither ; ugly struggles of unexpected 
strength from under the ground ; fallen fragments, 
toppling one over another into more helpless fall. 
Retire from it, and, as your ej'e commands it more 
and more, as you see the ruined mountain world 



494 A BUSKIN' ANTHOLOGY. 

with a wider glance — behold ! dim sympathies begin 
to bnsy themselves in the disjointed mass ; line 
binds itself into stealthy fellowship with line; group 
by group, the helpless fragments gather them- 
selves into ordered companies ; new captains of 
hosts and masses of battalions become visible, one 
by one, and far away answers of foot to foot, and of 
bone to bone, until the powerless chaos is seen risen 
up with girded loins, and not one piece of all the 
unregarded heap could now be spared from the 
mystic whole.— Stones of Veniee, I., p. 245. 

In a truly fine mountain or organic line, if it is 
looked at in detail, no one would believ^e in its 
being a continuous curve, or being subjected to 
any fixed law. It seems broken, and bending a thou- 
sand waj'S ; perfectly free and wild, and yielding to 
every impulse. But, after following with the eye 
three or four of its impulses, we shall begin to trace 
some strange order among them ; every added 
movement will make the ruling intent clearer; and 
when the whole life of the line is revealed at last, 
it will be found to have been, throughout, as obedi- 
ent to the true law of its course as the stars in their 
orbits. — Modern Painters, IV., p. 295. 

IlAPPixESS IX RURAL LiFE.— To watcli the corn 
grow, and the blossoms set ; to draw hard breath 
over ploughshare or spade ; to read, to think, to 
love, to hope, to pray — these are the things that 
make men happy; they have always had the power 
of doing these, they never will have poAver to do 
more. The world's prosperity or adversity depends 
upon our knowing and teaching these few things : 
but upon iron, or glass, or electricity, or steam, in 
no wiiie.^ Modern Painters, III., p. 320. 

The Loveliness of fruitful Landscape inex- 
haustible. — The desert has its appointed place and 
work; the eternal engine, whose beam is the earth's 
axle, whose beat is its year, and whose breath 
is its ocean, will still divide imperiously to their 
desert kingdoms, bound with unfurrowable rock, 
and swept by unarrested sand, their powers of frost 



NATUIiE AND LIT BEAT U RE-NAT UBE. dOo 

and fire : but the zones and lands between, habita- 
ble, will be loveliest in habitation. The desire of 
the heart is also the light of the eyes. No scene is 
continually and untiringly loved, but one rich by 
joyful human labor; smooth in field, fair in garden; 
full in orchard ; trim, sweet, and frequent in home- 
stead ; ringing with voices of vivid existence. No 
air is sweet that is silent ; it is only sweet when full 
of low currents of under sound — triplets of birds, 
and murmur and chirp of insects, and deep-toned 
words of men, and wayward trebles of childhood. — 
Unto This Last, p. 88. 

O'S THE ASSERTED PROBABILITY OF THE DE- 
STRUCTION OF Natural Scexery. — We may spare 
our anxieties on this head. Men can neither drink 
steam, nor eat stone. . . . No amount of ingenui- 
ty will ever make iron digestible by the million, nor 
substitute hydrogen for wine. Neither the avarice 
nor the rage of men will ever feed them, and how- 
ever the apple of Sodom and the grape of Gomorrah 
may spread their table for a time with dainties of 
ashes, and nectar of asjDS — so long as men live by 
bread, the far-away vallej^s must laugh as they are 
covered with the gold of God, and the shouts of His 
happy multitudes ring round the wine-press and 
the -vfeW—Unto This Last, p. 87. 

Ruskin's Love of Crags aa^d Hills.— If the 
scenery be resolutely level, insisting upon the dec- 
laration of its own flatness in all the detail of it, 
as in Holland, or Lincolnshire, or Central Lombar- 
dy, it appeai-s to me like a prison, and I cannot long 
endure it. But the slightest rise and fall in the 
road — a mossy bank at the side of a crag of chalk, 
with brambles at its brow, overhanging it — a rip- 
ple over three or four stones in the stream by the 
bridge— above all, a wild bit of ferny ground under 
a fir or two, looking as if, possibly, one might see a 
hill if one got to the other side of the trees, will in- 
stantly give me intense delight, because the shadow, 
or the hope, of the hills is in them. — Modern Paint- 
ers, IV., p. 3G8. 



496 A BUS KIN ANTHOLOGY, \^ 

Not Everybody can see a Landscape.— A cu- 
riously balanced condition of the powers of uiind 
is necessary to induce full admiration of any nat- 
ural scene. Let those powers be themselves inert, 
and the mind vacant of knowledge and destitute 
of sensibility, and the external object becomes lit- 
tle more to us than it is to birds or insects ; we fall 
into the temper of the clown. On the other hand, 
let the reasoning powers be shrewd in excess, the 
knowledge vast, or sensibility intense, and it will 
go hard but that the visible object will suggest so 
much that it shall be soon itself forgotten, or be- 
come, at the utmost, merely a kind of key-note to 
the course of purposeful thought. Newton, prob- 
ably, did not perceive whether the apple which sug- 
gested his meditations on gravity Avas withered or 
rosy ; nor could Howard be affected by the pictur- 
esqueness of the architecture which held the suf- 
ferers it was his occupation to relieve. — 3Ioclern 
Painters, III., p. 308. 

The ethical Significance op a Love of Nature. 
— Intense love of nature is, in modern times, char- 
acteristic of persons not of the first order of intellect, 
but of brilliant imagination, quick sympathy, and 
undefined religious principle, suffering also usually 
under strong and ill-governed passions. . . . Our 
main conclusion is, that though the absence of the 
love of nature is not an assured condemnation, its 
presence is an invariable sign of goodness of heart 
and justness of moral j)^^''"-^Pii'^^^^' though by no 
means of moral jiractice ; that in proportion to the 
degree in Avhich it is felt, will 2)f'obabli/ he the degree 
in which all nobleness and beauty of character will 
also be felt ; that when it is originally absent from 
any mind, that mind is in many other respects hard, 
worldly, and degraded ; that where, having been 
originally present, it is repressed by art or educa- 
tion, that repression appears to have been detri- 
mental to the person suffering it ; and that where- 
ever the feeling exists, it acts for good on the char- 
acter to which it belongs, though, as it may belong 



NATURE AND LITERATURJE— NATURE. 49"? 

to cliaracters weak in other respects, it may care- 
lessly be mistaken for a soui-ce of evil in them. . . . 
Take, as conspicuous instances of men totally de- 
void of love of nature, Le Sage and Smollett, and 
you will find, in meditating over their works, that 
they are utterly incapable of conceiving- a human 
soul as endowed with any nobleness whatever; their 
lieroes are simply beasts endowed with some degree 
of human intellect ;— cunning, false, passionate, 
reckless, ungrateful, and abominable, incapable of 
noble joy, of noble sorrow, of any spiritual percep- 
tion or hope. I said, " beasts with human intel- 
lect ; " but neither Gril Bias nor Roderick Random 
reach, morally, tinything near the level of dogs ; 
while the delight which the writers themselves feel 
in mere filth and pain, with an unmitigated foul- 
ness and cruelty of heart, is just as manifest in 
ever}' sentence as the distress and indignation which 
with pain and injustice are seen by Shelley and 
Byron.— Modern Painters, III., pp. 311,328, 324. 

Nature ix the South axd i:s^ the North.— 
While the Greek could hardly have trodden the for- 
mal furrow, or plucked the clusters from The trel- 
lised vine, without reverent thoughts of the deities 
of field and leaf, who gave the seed to fructifj', and 
the bloom to darken, the medieval knight plucked 
the violet to wreathe in his lady's hair, or strewed 
the idle rose on the turf at her feet, with little sense 
of anything in the nature that gave them, but a 
frail, accidental, involuntary exuberance. — Modern 
Painters, III., p. 215. 

How different must the thoughts about nature have 
been, of the noble who lived among the bright mar- 
ble porticos of the Grreeiv groups of temple or palace 
— in the midst of a plain covered with corn and 
olives, and by the shore of a sparkling and freighted 
sea — from those of the master of some mountain 
promontory in the green recesses of Northern 
Europe, watching night by night, from amongst 
liis heaps of storm-broken stone, rounded into 
towers, the lightning of the lonely sea flash round 



498 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY, 

the sands of Harlech, or the mists changing their 
shapes for ever, among the changeless pines, that 
fringe the crests of Jura. — Modern Painters, III., 
p. 216. 

In the climates of Greece and Italy, the monoto- 
nous sunshine, burning away the deep colors of 
everything into white and gray, and wasting the 
strongest mountain sti-eams into threads among 
their shingle, alternates with the blue-fiery thunder- 
cloud, with sheets of flooding rain, and volleying 
musketry of hail. But throughout all the wild 
ujolands of the former Saxon kingdom of Northum- 
bria, from Edwin's Crag to Hilda' s-Cliff, the wreaths 
of softly resting mist, and wandering to and fro of 
capricious shadows of clouds, and drooping swathes, 
or flying fringes, of the benignant western rain, 
cherish, on every moorland summit, the deejj fibred 
moss, embalm the myrtle, gild the asphodel, en- 
chant along the valleys the wild grace of their 
woods, and the green elf-land of their meadows ; 
and passing away, or melting into the translucent 
calm of mountain air, leave to the open sunshine a 
world with every creature ready to rejoice in its 
comfort, and every i-ock and flower reflecting new 
loveliness to its light. — Art of England, p. 94. 

Frexch Landscape.— Much of the majesty of 
French landscape consists in its grand and gray 
village churches and tui-reted farm-houses, not to 
speak of its cathedrals, castles, and beautifully 
placed cities. — Modern Painters, IV., p. 369. 

One op Turner's Loire Drawings.— It is only 
a coteau, scarce a hundred feet above the river, 
nothing like so high as the Thames banks between 
here and Reading ; only a coteau, and a recess of 
calm water, and a breath of mist, and a ray of sun- 
set. The simplest things, the frequentest, the deai'- 
est ; things that you may see any summer evening 
by a thousand thousand streams among the low 
hills of old familiar lands. Love them, and see 
them rightly ; Andes and Caucasus, Amazon and. 



NAirUE AXI) LITERATURE-NATURE. 499 

Indus, can give you no move.— Art of England, 
p. 70. 

Injury to Swiss Scenery.— This first day of 
May, 18(59, I am writing wliere my work was begun 
thirty-five years ago— within siglit of the snows of 
the higlier Alps. In that half of the permitted life 
of man, I have seen strange evil brought upon 
every scene that I best loved, or tried to make 
beloved by others. The light which once flushed 
those pale summits with its rose at dawn, and pui'- 
ple at sunset, is now umbered and faint ; the air 
which once inlaid the clefts of all their golden crags 
with azure, is now defiled with languid coils of 
smoke, belched from worse than volcanic fires ; 
their very glacier waves are ebbing, and tlieir 
snows fading, as if Hell had breathed on them ; the 
waters that once sank at their feet into crystalline 
rest, are now dimmed and foul, from deep to deep, 
and shore to shore. These are no careless words— 
they are accurately, horribly, true. I know what 
the Swiss lakes were ; no pool of Alpine fountain 
at its source was clearer. This morning, on the 
Lake of Geneva, at half a mile from the beach, I 
could scarcely see my oar-blade a fathom deep.— 
Athena, p. 4. 

Cluse and Chamouni.— The valley of Cluse, 
through which unhappy travellers consent now to 
be invoiced, packed in baskets like fish, so only that 
they may cheaply reach, in the feverous haste 
which has become the law of their being, the glen 
of Chamouni whose every lovely foreground rock 
has now been broken up to build hotels for them, 
contains more beauty in half a league of it, than 
the entire valley they have devastated, and turned 
into a casino, did in its uninjured pride.— Sesame 
and Lilies, Preface, p. 22. 

Bells in the Valley op Cluse.— But presently, 
as I walked, the calm was deepened, instead of in- 
terrupted, by a murmur ; first low, as of bees, and 
then rising into distinct harmonious chime of deep 
bells, ringing in true cadences— but I could not tell 



500 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

where. The cliffs on each side of the valley of Cluse 
vary from 1,500 to above 2,000 feet in height ; and, 
withovit absolutely echoing the chime, they so ac- 
cepted, prolonged, and diffused it, that at first I 
thought it came from a village high up and far 
away among the hills; then presently it came down 
to me as if from above the cliff' under which I was 
walking ; then I turned about and stood still, won- 
dering ; for the whole valley was filled with the 
sweet sound, entirely without local or conceivable 
origin : and only after some twenty minutes' walk, 
the depth of tones gradually increasing, showed 
me that they came from the tower of Magians 
in front of me ; but when I actually got into the 
village, the cliffs on the other side so took up the 
ringing, that I again thought for some moments 1 
was wrong. Perfectly beautiful, all th* while, the 
sound, and exquisitely varied — from ancient bells 
of perfect tone and series, rung with decent and 
joyful art. 

" What are the bells ringing so to-day for — it is no 
fete ? " I asked of a woman who stood watching at 
a garden gate. 

" For a baptism, Sir." 

And so I went on, and heard them fading back, 
and lost among the same bewildering answers of the 
mountain air. — Deucalion, p. 51. 

A Swiss RURAL Sce:ve.— A few steps only beyond 
the firs that sti'etch their branches, angular, and 
Avild, and white, like forks of lightning, into the air 
of the ravine, and we are in an arable country of 
the most perfect richness ; the swathes of its corn 
glowing and burning frouj field to field ; its pretty 
hamlets all vivid with fruitful orchards and flowery 
gardens, and goodly Avith steep-roofed storehouse 
and barn ; its Avell-kept, hard, park-like roads ris- 
ing and falling from hillside to hillside, or disap- 
pearing among brown banks of moss, and thickets 
of the wild raspberry and rose ; or gleaming 
through lines of tall trees, half glade, half avenue, 
where the gate opens, or the gateless path turns 



NATURE AND LlTEIl AT U RE— NATURE. 501 

trustedly aside, uii hindered, into the garden of 
some statelier house, surrounded in rural pride 
with its golden hives, and carved granaries, and 
irregular domain of latticed and espaliered cottages, 
gladdening to look upon in their delicate homeli- 
ness — delicate, yet, in some sort, rude ; not like our 
English homes — trim, laborious, formal, irreproach- 
able in comfort ; but with a peculiar carelessness 
and lariieness in all their detail, hai-monizing with 
the outlawed loveliness of their country. — Modern 
Painters, IV., p. 147, 

Garde;^^ Walls. — Your garden or park wall of 
bi'ick has indeed often an unkind look on the out- 
side, but there is more modesty in it than vinkind- 
ness. It generally means, not that the builder of it 
wants to shut you out from the view of his garden, 
but from the view of himself : it is a frank state- 
ment that as he needs a certain portion of time to 
himself, so he needs a certain portion of ground 
to himself, and must not be stared at when he digs 
there in his shirt-sleeves, or plays at leapfrog with 
his boys from school, or talks over old times with 
his wife, Avalking up and down in the evening sun- 
shine. Besides, the brick wall has good practical 
service in it, and shelters you from the east wind, 
and ripens your peaches and nectarines, and glows 
in autumn like a sunny bank. And, moreover, 
your brick wall, if you build it properly, so that it 
shall stand long enough, is a beautiful thing when 
it is old, and has assumed its grave purple red, 
touched with mossy green. — The Two Paths, p. 115. 



502 A RU8KIN ANTHOLOGY. 



CHAPTER II. 

Literature. 

The more I see of wi'iting the less I care for it : 
one may do more with a man by getting ten words 
spoken with him face to face, than by the black let- 
tering of a whole life's thought. — Fors, I., p. 239. 

Men do not sing themselves into love or faith ; 
but they are incapable of true song, till they love, 
and believe. — Deucalion, p. 208. 

Not one word of any book is readable by you ex- 
cept so far as your mind is one with its author's, 
and not merely his words like your words, but his 
thoughts like your thoughts. — Fors, I., p. 349. 

You think the function of words is to excite? 
Why, a red rag will do that, or a blast through a 
brass pipe. But to give calm and gentle heat ; to 
be as the south wind, and the iridescent rain, to all 
bitterness of frost ; and bring at once strength, and 
healing. This is the work of human lips, taught of 
God.— Mornings in Florence, p. 83. 



BOOKS. 

If a book is worth reading, it is worth buying. 
No book is worth anything which is not worth 
mticJi; nor is it serviceable, until it has been read, 
and re-read, and loved, and loved again ; and 
marked, so that you can refer to the passages you 
want in it, as a soldier can seize the weapon he 
needs in an armory, or a housewife bring the spice 
she needs from her store. Bread of flour is good : 
but there is bread, sweet as honey, if we would eat 
it, in a good book ; and the family' must be poor 
indeed which, once in their lives, cannot, for such 



NATCHE A^'^I) LITERATrRK-LITEliATURE. 503 

multipliable bai'ley-loaves, pay their baker's bill. 
We call ourselves a rich jiation. and we are filthy 
and foolish enough to thumb each other's books 
out of circulating libraries. — Sesame and Lilies i 
p. 55. 

In old times what a delicious thing a book used 
to be in a chimney corner, or in the gai-den, or in 
the fields, Avhere one usedreally toread a book, and 
nibble a nice bit here and there if it was a bride- 
cakey sort of book, and cut oneself a lovely slice — 
fat and lean — if it was a round-of-beef sort of book. 
But what do you do with a book now, be it ever so 
good ? You give it to a reviewer, first to skin it, 
and then to bone it, and then to chew it, and then 
to lick it, and then to give it you down your throat 
like a handful of pilau. And when you've got it, 
you've no relish for it, after all. — Deucalion. 

When you come to a good book, you must ask 
youi'self, " Am I inclined to work as an Australian 
miner would? Are my pickaxes and shovels in 
good order, and am 1 in good trim myself, my 
sleeves well up to the elljow, and my breath good, 
and my temper? " — Sesame and Lilies, p. 36. 

As I meditate more and more closely what reply I 
may safely make to the now eagerly i)ressed ques- 
tioning of my faithful scholars, what books I would 
have them read, 1 find the first broadlj^-swept defi- 
nition may be — Books written in the country. 
None worth spending time on, and few that are 
quite safe to touch, have been written in towns. 

And my next narrowing definition would be, 
Books that have good miisic in them — that are 
rightly-rhythmic : a definition which includes the 
delicacy of perfect prose, such as Scott's ; and 
Avhich eajcludes at once a great deal of modern 
poetry, in which a dislocated and convulsed versi- 
fication has been imposed on the ear in the attempt 
to express uneven temper, and unprincij^led feel- 
ing. — Fors, IV., p. o51. 

Very ready we are to say of a book, "How 



504 A EUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

good this is — that's exactly what I think i " But 
the right feeling is " How strange that is ! I never 
thought of that before-, and yet I see it is true ; or 
if I do not now, I hope I shall, some day." But 
whether thus submissively or not, at least be sure 
that you go to the author to get at his meaning, 
not to find yours. ... As we read, watching every 
accent and expression, and putting ourselves 
always in the author's place, annihilating our own 
personality, and seeking to enter into his, so as to 
be able assuredly to say, " Thus Milton thought," 
not "Thus I thought in mis-reading Milton." 
And by this process you will gradually come to 
attach less weight to your own " Thus I thought " 
at other times. — Sesame and Lilies, pp. 36, 46. 

Though few can be rich, yet every man who 
honestly exerts himself may, I think, still provide, 
for himself and his family, good shoes, good gloves, 
strong harness for his cart or carriage horses, and 
stout leather binding for his books. And I would 
urge upon every young man, as the beginning of his 
due and wise provision for his household, to obtain as 
soon as he can , by the severest economy, a restricted, 
serviceable, and steadily — however slowly — increas- 
ing series of books for use through life ; making his 
little library, of all the furniture in his room, the 
most studied and decorative piece ; every volume 
having its assigned place, like a little statue in its 
niche, and one of the earliest and strictest lessons 
to the children of the house being how to turn the 
pages of their own literary possesions lightly and 
deliberately, with no chance of tearing or dog's 
eeirs.— Sesame and Lilies, Preface, 1871, p. 5. 

In my island of Barataria, when I get it well into 
order. I assure you no book shall be sold for less 
than a pound sterling ; if it can be published 
cheaper than that, the surplus shall all go into my 
treasury, and save my subjects taxation in other 
directions ; only people really poor, who cannot 
pay the pound, shall be supplied with the books 



NATURE AND LITEnATURE-LITERATURE. !-)05 

tliey want fov nothing, in a certain limited qiian- 
tity.— ^ Joy For Ever, p. 44. 

There is a society continually open to us, of peo- 
ple who will talk to us as long as we like, whatever 
our rank or occupation ; — talk to us in the best 
words they can choose, and with thanks if we listen 
to them. And this society, because it is so numer- 
ous and so gentle — and can be kept waiting round 
us all day long, not to grant audience, but to gain 
it ; — kings and statesmen lingering patiently in 
those plainly furnished and narrow anterooms, 
our bookcase shelves.— ^SeA-ame and Lilies, p. 32. 

This court of the past differs from all living aris- 
tocracy in this : — it is open to labor and to merit, 
but to nothing else. No wealth will bribe, no name 
overawe, no artifice deceiv^p, the guardian of those 
Elysian gates. In the deep sense, no vile or vulgar 
person ever enters there. At the portieres of that 
silent Faubourg St. Germain, there is but brief 
question, "Do you deserve to enter?" "Pass." 
" Do you ask to be the companion of nobles ? Make 
yourself noble, and you shall be. Do you long for 
the conversation of the wise ? Learn to understand 
it, and you shall hear it. But on other terms ? — no. 
If yovi will not rise to us, we cannot stoop to you. 
The living lord may assume courtesy, the living 
philosopher explain his thought to you with con- 
siderable pain ; but here we neither feign nor inter- 
pret ; you must rise to the level of our thoughts if 
you would be gladdened by them, and share our 
feelings, if you would recognize our presence." — 
Sesame and Lilies, p. 35. 

You ought to read books, as you take medicine, 
by advice, and not advertisement. . . . 

But you have no acquaintance, you say, among 
peoijle who know good books from bad ones? 
Possibly not ; and yet, half the poor gentlemen of 
England are fain now-a-days to live by selling their 
opinions on this subject. It is a bad trade, let me 
tell them. Whatever judgment they have, likely 
to be useful to the human beings about them, may 



506 A nUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

be expressed in few words ; and those words of 
sacred advice ought not to be articles of commerce. 
Least of all ought they to be so ingeniously con- 
cocted that idle readers may remain content with 
reading their eloquent account of a book, instead 
of the book itself.— i^or^, I., pp. 274, 275. 

If you want to understand any subject whatever, 
read the best book upon it, you can hear of ; not 
a review of the book. If you don't like the first 
book you try, seek for another ; but do not hope 
ever to understand the subject without pains, by a 
reviewer's help. Avoid especially that class of lit- 
erature which has a knowing tone ; it is the most 
poisonous of all. Every good book, or piece of 
book, is full of admiration and awe ; it may con- 
tain firm assertion or stern satire, but it never 
sneers coldly, nor asserts haughtily, and it always 
leads you to reverence or love something with your 
whole heart. It is not always easy to distinguish 
' the satire of the venomous race of books from the 
. satire of the noble and pui-e ones ; but in general 
you may notice that the cold-blooded Crustacean 
and Batrachian books will sneer at sentiment; and 
the warm-blooded, human books, at sin. Then, in 
general, the more you can restrain your serious 
reading to reflective or lyric poetry, history, and 
natural history, avoiding fiction and the drama, 
the healthier your mind will become. Of modern 
poetry keep to Scott, Wordsworth, Keats, Crabbe, 
Tennyson, the two Brownings, Lowell, Longfellow, 
and Coventry Patmore, w^hose Angel in the House 
is a most finished piece of writing, and the sweetest 
analysis we possess of quiet modern domestic feel- 
ing ; while Mrs. Browning's Aurora Leigh is, as far 
as I know, the greatest poem which the century has 
produced in any language. Cast Coleridge at once 
aside, as sickly and useless : and Shelley as shallow 
and verbose; Byron, until your taste is fully formed, 
and you are able to discern the magnificence in 
him from the wrong. Never read bad or common 
poetry, nor write any poetry yourself j there is, per- 



XATrnE AXT) LITERATURE— LITERATURE. 507 

haps, rather too much than too little in the world 
aXveenXy.— Elements of Drawing, pp. 193, 194. 

Write pure English. — Whenever you write or 
read Englisli, write it pure, and make it pure, if ill 
written, by avoiding all unnecessary foreign — espe- 
cially (jrreek — forms of words yourself, and translat- 
ing them when used by others. Above all, make 
this a practice in science. Great part of the sup- 
posed scientific knowledge of the day is simply bad 
English and vanishes the moment you ti'anslate it. 
— Deucalion, p. 143. 

Derivatiois^ of Words. — The derivation of words 
is like that of rivers : there is one real source, 
usually small, unlikely, and difficult to find, far up 
among the hills ; then, as the word flows on and 
conies into service, it takes in the force of other 
Avords from other sources, and becomes quite 
another word — often much more than one word, 
after the junction — a word as it were of many 
waters, sometimes both sweet and bitter. — Munera 
Pulveris, p. 361. 

Coventry Patmore.— You cannot read him too 
often or too carefully ; as far as I know he is the 
only living poet who always strengthens and 
purifies ; the others sometimes darken, and nearly 
always depress and discourage the imagination 
they deeply seize. — Sesame and Lilies, p. 89. 

Virgil and Pope.— These are the two most ac- 
complished Artists, mei'ely as such, whom I know 
in literature. — Lectures on Art, p. 49. 

Trashy Poetry. — AVith poetry second-rate in 
quality no one ought to be allowed to trouble 
mankind. There is quite enough of the best — much 
more than we can ever read or enjoy in the length 
of a life ; and it is a literal wrong or sin in any per- 
son to encumber us with inferior work. I have no 
patience with apologies made by young pseudo- 
poets, " that they believe there is some good in 
what they have written : that they hope to do bet- 
ter in tinie," etc. hioiae good I If there is not all 



508 A EUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

good, there is no good. If they ever hope to do bet 
ter, why do they trouble us now ? Let them rathei 
courageously burn all they have done, and wait for 
the better days. There are few men, ordinarily 
educated, who in moments of strong feeling could 
not strike out a poetical thought, and afterwards 
jsolish it so as to be presentable. But men of sense 
know better than so to waste their time ; and those 
who sincerely love poetry, know the touch of the 
master's hand on the chords too well to fumble 
among them after him.—lfodern Painters, III., 
p. 176. 

Pastoral Poetry.— The essence of pastoral 
poetry is the sense of strange delightfulness is 
grass, which is occasionally felt by a man who has 
seldom set his foot on it ; it is essentially the poetry 
of the cockney, and for the most part corresponds 
in its aim and rank, as compared with other litera- 
ture, to the porcelain shepherds and shepherdesses 
on a chimney-piece as compa,red wltli great works 
of sculptui-e. Of course all good. poetry, descri[)tive 
of rural life, is essentially pastoral, or has the effect 
of the pastoral on the minds of men living in cities ; 
but the class of poetry which I mean, and which you 
probably understand, by the term pastoral, is that 
in which a farmer's girl is spoken of as a 
" nymph," and a farmer's boy as a " swain," and in 
Avhich, throughout, a ridiculous and unnatural 
refinement is supposed to exist in rural life, merely 
because the poet himself has neither had the cour- 
age to endure its hardships, nor the Avit to conceive* 
its Idealities. — Lectures on Architecture, p. 191. 

First and last Impressions.— Gfenerally speaks 
ing, I find that when we first look at a subject, we 
get a glimpse of some of the greatest truths about 
it : as we look longer, our vanity, and false reason- 
ing, and half-knowledge, lead us into various wrong 
opinions ; but as we look longer still, we gradual- 
ly return to our first impressions, onlj^ with a full 
understanding of their mystical and inneiniost 
reasons ; and of much beyond and beside them, not 



NATtrnE AND LlTFAtATrnB-LITEBATVEE. 509 

then known to us, now added (partly as a founda- 
tion, partly as a corollary) to what at first we felt 
or saw. — Modern Patnters, IV., p. 61. 

Wordsworth. — Wordsworth is simply a West- 
moreland peasant, with considerably less shrewd- 
ness than most border Englishmen or Scotsmen in- 
herit ; and no sense of humor : but gifted (in this 
singularly) with vivid sense of natural beauty, and 
a pretty turn for reflections, not always acute, but, 
as far as they reach, inedicinal to the fever of the 
restless and corrupted life around him. Water to 
parched lips may be better than Samian wine, but 
do not let us therefore confuse the qualities of wine 
and water. I much doubt there being many inglo- 
rious Miltons in our country churchyards ; but I 
am very sure there are many Wordsworths resting 
there, who wei;e inferior to the renowned one only 
in caring less to hear themselves talk. . . . 

I am by no meiins sure that his influence on the 
stronger minds of his time was anyAvise hastened or 
extended by the spirit of tunefulness under whose 
guidance he discovered that Heaven rhymed to 
seven, and Foy to boy. Tuneful nevertheless at 
heart, and of the heavenly choir, I gladly and frank- 
ly acknowledge him ; and our English literature 
enriched with a new and singular virtue in the 
aerial purity and healthful rightness of his quiet 
song ; — but aerial only — not ethereal ; and lowly in 
its privacy of light. 

A measured mind, and calm; innocent, unrepent- 
ant ; helpful to sinless ci-eatures and scatheless, 
such of the flock as do not stray. Hopeful at least, 
if not faithful ; content with intimations of immor- 
tality such as may be in skipping of lambs, and 
laughter of children — incurious to see in the hands 
the print of the nails. A gracious and constant 
mind ; as the herbage of its native hills, fragrant 
and pure ; — yet, to the sweep and the shadow, the 
stress and distress, of the greater souls of men, as 
the tufted thyme to the laurel wilderness of Tempe, 
— as the gleaming euphrasy to the dark branches of 
Y>o(}ion-A.—Fivtiun—Fair and Foul, pp. 4G-48. 



510 A RUSKIN ANTHOIOQY. 

BHAKEsrEARE.— The intellectual measure of 
every man since born, in the domains of creative 
thought, may be assigned to him, according to the 
degree in which he has been tauglit by Shakespeare. 
— Mystery of Life, p. 113. 

At the close of a Shakespeare tragedy nothing re- 
mains but dead march and clothes of burial. At 
the close of a Greek tragedy there are far-off sounds 
of a divine triumph, and a glory as of resurrection. 
Modern Painters, V., p. 231. 

With a stern view of humanity, Shakespeare 
<oined a sorrowful view of Fate, closely resembling 
that of . the ancients. He is distinguished from 
Dante eminently by his always dwelling on last 
causes instead of first causes. Dante invariably 
points to the moment of the souTs choice "which 
fixed its fate, to the instant of the day Avhen it read 
no farther, or determined to give bad advice about 
Penestrino. But Shakespeare always leans on the 
force of Fate, as it urges the final evil ; and dwells 
with infinite bitterness on the power of the wicked, 
and the infinitude of result dependent seemingly on 
little things. A fool brings the last piece of news 
from Vei'ona, and the dearest lives of its noble 
houses are lost ; they might have been saved if the 
sacristan had not stumbled as he walked. Othello 
mislays his handkerchief, and there remains noth- 
ing for him but death. Haujlet gets hold of the 
wrong foil, and the rest is silence. Edmund's run- 
ner is a moment too late at the prison, and the 
feather will not move at Cordelia's lips. Salisbury 
a moment too late at the tower, and Arthur lies on 
the stones dead. Goneril and lago have, on the 
whole, in this world, Shakespeare sees, much of 
their own way, though they come to a bad end. It 
is a pin that Death pierces the king's fortess wall 
with ; and Carelessness and Folly sit sceptred and 
dreadful, side by side with the pin-armed skeleton. 
—Modern Painters, IV., p. 398. 

GrERMA:N^ ScHWARMEREi.— A modern German, 
without either invention or sense, seeing a rapid in 



JS/ATURE AND LITERATURE-LITERATURE. 511 

a river, will innnecliately devote the remainder of 
the day to the composition of dialogues between 
amorous water nymphs and unhappy mariners ; 
while the man of true invention, power, and sense 
will, instead, set himself to consider whether the 
rocks in the river could have their points knocked 
off, or the boats upon it be made with stronger 
hottoms.—JIodern Painters, III., p. 87. 

Character-paintixg.— The power of conceiving 
personal, as opposed to general, character, depends 
on purity of heart and sentiment. The men who 
cannot quit themselves of the impure taint, never 
invent character, properly so called ; they only in- 
vent symbols of common humanity. Even Fielding's 
Allworthy is not a chai-aeter, but a type of a simple 
English gentleman ; and Squire Western is not a 
character, but a type of the rude English squire. 
But Sir Roger de Coverley is a character, as Avell as 
a type; there is no one else like him ; and the mas- 
ters of Tullyveolan, Ellangowan, Monkbarns, and 
Osbaldistone Hall, are all, whether slightly or 
completely drawn, portraits, not mere symbols. — 
Fors, II., p. 82. 

Fiction vs. strict Realism.— For some ten or 
twelve years I have been asking every good writer 
whom I knew, to write some part of what was ex- 
actly true, in the greatest of the sciences, that of 
Humanity. It seemed to me time that the Poet and 
Romance- writer should become now the strict his- 
torian of days which , professing the ojjenest proclam- 
ation of themselves, kept yet in secresy all that was 
most beautiful, and all that was most woful, in the 
multitude of their unshei^herded souls. And, during 
these years of unanswered petitioning, 1 have be- 
come more and more convinced that tlie wholesomest 
antagonism to whatever is dangerous in tlie temper, 
or foolish in the extravagance of Modern Fiction, 
would be found in sometimes substituting for the 
artfully-combined improbability, the careful record 
of providentially ordered Fact.— The Story of Ida^ 
Preface. 



512 A BUS KIN ANTHOLOGY. 

Accurate ax^d inaccurate Work.— I gave three 
years' close and incessant labor to the examination 
]/' of the chronology of the architecture of Venice ; 
tAvo long winters being wholly spent in the draw- 
ing of details on the spot : and yet I see constant!}' 
that architects who pass three or four days in a 
gondola going up and down thegi*and canal, think 
that tlieir first impressions are just as likely to be 
true as my patiently wrought conclusions. — Joy For 
Ever, I). 105. 

I have been much impressed lately by one of the re- 
sults of the quantity of our books; namely, the stern 
impossibility of getting anything understood, that 
required patience to understand. I observe always, 
in the case of my own writings, that if ever I state 
anything which has cost me any trouble to ascer- 
tain, and which, therefore, will probably require a 
minute or two of reflection from the reader before 
it can be accepted — that statement wall not only 
be misunderstood, but in all probability taken to 
mean something vei-y nearly the reverse of what it 
does mean. — Joy For Eoer, p. 104. 

Ears stretched wide.— I find the desire of 
audiences to be audiences only becoming an 
entirely pestilent character of the age. Everybody 
Avants to hear, nobody to read, nobody to think. To 
be excited for an hour, and, if possible, amused ; to 
get the knowledge it has cost a man half his life 
to gather, first sweetened up to make it palatable, 
and then kneaded into the smallest possible pills, 
and to swallow it homwopathically and be wise — 
this is the passionate desire and hope of the multi- 
tude of the day. 

It is not to be done. A living comment quietly 
given to a class on a book they are earnestly read- 
ing — this kind of lecture is eternally necessary 
and wholesome; your modern fire-working, smooth- 
downy - curry- and- strawberry-ice-and-milk-punch- 
altogether lecture is an entirely pestilent and abom- 
inable vanity ; and the miserable death of poor 
Dickens, when he might have been Avriting blessed 



NATURE AND LirERATURE— LITERATURE. 513 

books till he was eighty, but for the pestiferous 
demand of the mob, is a very solemn warning to us 
all, if we would take it.— Arrors of the Chace, 11. , 
p. 115. 

Gabble of Fools.— You avIU find, if you think 
deeply of it, that the chief of all the curses of this 
unhappy age is the universal gabble of its fools, and 
of the flocks that follow them, rendering the quiet 
voices of the wise men of all past time inaudible. 
This is, first, the result of the invention of printing, 
and of the easy power and extreme pleasure to vain 
persons of seeing themselves in print. When it 
took a twelvemonth's hard work to make a single 
volume legible, men considered a little the difference 
between one book and another ; but now, when 
not only anybody can get themselves made legible 
through any quantity of volumes, in a week, but 
the doing so becomes a means of living to them, 
and they can fill their stomachs with the foolish 
foam of their lips, the univei-sal pestilence of false- 
hood fills the mind of the world as cicadas do olive- 
leaves, and the first necessity for our mental 
government, is to extricate from among the insect- 
ile noise, the few books and words that are Divine. 
—Fors, IV., p. 116. 

Critics.— Criticism is as impertinent in the world 
as it is in a di'awing-room. In a kindly and well- 
bred company, if anybody tries to please th-em, 
they try to be pleased ; if anybody tries to astonish 
them, they have the courtesy to be astonished ; if 
people become tiresome, they ask somebody else to 
play, or sing, or what not ; but they don't ci'iticise. 
For the rest, a bad critic is probably the most mis- 
chievous person in the w^orld, and a good one the 
most helpless and unhappy: the more he knows, the 
less he is trusted, and it is too likely he may become 
morose in his unacknowledged power. A good 
executant, in any art, gives pleasiare to miiltitudes, 
and breathes an atmosphere of praise, but a strong 
critic is every man's adversary— men feel that he 
knows their foibles, and cannot conceive that 



514 A HUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

he knows more. His praise to be acceptable, must 
be always nnqvialified ; his equity is an offense in- 
stead of a virtue ; and the art of correction, which 
he has learned so laboriously, only fills his hearers 
with (liiigust.—AiTows of the Chace, II., p. 149. 

Blackwood's Magazine.— This Magazine— which 
from the time that, with grace, judgment, and 
tenderness peculiarly its own, it bid the dying 
Keats " back to his gallipots," to that in which it 
partly arrested the last efforts, and shortened the 
life of Turner, did, with an infallible instinct for the 
wrong, give what pain it could, and wither what 
strength it could, in every great mind that was 
in anywise within its reach ; and made itself, to 
the utmost of its power, frost and disease of the 
heart to the most noble spirits of England. — Modem 
Painteis, IV., p. 415. 



MYTHS. 

William Tell. — It is no matter how much, or 
how little, of the two first books of Livy may be lit- 
erally true. The history of the Romans is the his- 
tory of the nation which could conceive the battle 
of the Lake Regillus. I have rowed in rough weath- 
er on the Lake of the Four Cantons often enough 
to know that the legend of Tell is, in literal detail, 
absurd : but the history of Switzerland is that of 
the people who expressed their imagination of re- 
sistance to injustice by that legend, so as to animate 
their character vitally to this day. — Eaglets Nest, 
p. 129. 

Cincinnatus.— Itis fatally certain that whenever 
you begin to seek the real authority for legends, 
you will generally find that the ugly ones have 
good foundation, and the beautiful ones none. Be 
prepared for this ; and remember that a lovely 
legend is all the more precious when it has no 
foundation. Cincinnatus might actually have been 
found ploughing beside the Tiber fifty times over; 



NAT CUE AXD LlTEllATUIiE-LITEUATUEE. 515 

and it might have signified little to anyone ; — least 
of all to you or me. But if Cincinnatus never was 
so found, nor ever existed at all in flesh and blood ; 
but the great Roman nation, in its strength of con- 
viction that manual labor in tilling the ground was 
good and honorable, invented a quite bodiless Cin- 
cinnatus ; and set him, according to its fancy, in 
furrows of the field, and put its own words into his 
mouth, and gave the honor of its ancient deeds into 
his ghostly hand ; this fable, which has no founda- 
tion ; this precious coinage of the brain and con- 
science of a miglity people, you and I — believe me — 
had better read, and know, and take to heart, dili- 
gently. — Fors, I., p. 277. 

Origijv and Growth of Myths. — The real mean- 
ing of any myth is that which it lias at the noblest 
age of the nation among whom it is current. The 
farther back you pierce, the less significance you 
will find, until you come to the first narrow thought, 
which, indeed, contains tlie germ of the accom- 
plislied tradition; but only as tlie seed contains the 
flower. As tlie intelligence and passion of the race 
develop, they cling to and noarish their beloved 
and sacred legend ; leaf by leaf it expands under 
the touch of more pure affections, and more deli- 
cate imagination, until at last the perfect fable 
burgeons out into symmetry of milky stem and 
honied heW.— Athena, p. 13. 

In all the most beautiful and enduring myths, 
we sliall find, not only a literal story of a real 
person ; not only a parallel imagery of moral 
principle, but an underlying worship of natural 
phenomena, out of which both have sprung, and 
in which both forever remain rooted. Thus, from 
the real sun, rising and setting ; from the real 
atmosphere, calm in its dominion of unfading blue, 
and fierce in its descent of tempest — the Greek 
forms first the idea of two entirely personal and 
corporeal gods, whose limbs are clothed in divine 
flesh, and whose brows are crowned with divine 
beauty ; yet so real that the quiver rattles at their 



516 A B¥SKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

shoulder, and the chariot bends beneath their 
weight. And, on the other hand, collaterally with 
these coi'poreal images, and never for one instant 
separated from them, he conceives also two omni- 
present spiritual influences, of which one illumi- 
nates, as the sun, with a constant fire, whatever in 
humanity is skilful and wise ; and the other, like 
the living air, breathes the calm of heavenly forti- 
tude, and strength of righteous anger, into every 
human breast that is pure and hrsive.— Athena, 
p. 11. 

The Myth op Athena. — Athena is, physically, 
the queen of the air; having supreme power both 
over its blessing of calm, and wrath of storm ; 
and, spiritually, she is the queen of the breath of 
man : first of the bodily breathing, which is life to 
his blood, and strength to his arm in battle ; and 
then of the mental breathing, or inspiration, which 
is his moral health and habitual wisdom ; wisdom 
of conduct and of the heart, as opposed to the Avis- 
dom of imagination and the brain ; moral, as dis- 
tinct from intellectual ; inspired, as distinct from 
illuminated. — Athena, p. 16. 

Athena is the air, giving life and health to all ani- 
mals. She is the air, giving vegetative power to the 
earth. She is the air, giving motion to the sea, and 
rendering navigation possible. She is the air, nour- 
ishing artificial light, torch or lamplight ; as op- 
posed to that of the sun, on one hand, and of co7i- 
suming fire on the other. She is the air, conveying 
vibration of sound. — Athena, p. 31. 

Dream of Neith and the Pyramid.— It was 
near evening ; and as I looked towards the sunset, 
I saw a thing like a dark pillar standing where the 
rock of the desert stoops to the Nile valley. I did 
not know there was a pillar there, and wondered at 
it ; and it grew larger, and glided nearer, becoming 
like the form of a man, but vast, and it did not 
move its feet, but glided like a pillar of sand. And 
as it drew nearer, I looked by chance past it to- 
wards the sun ; and saw a silver cloud, which wa.-^ 



NATURE AND LITERATUBE-LITERATURE. 51t 

of ail the clouds closest to the sun (and in one place 
crossed it), draw itself back from the sun, suddenly. 
And it turned, and shot towards the dark pillar; 
leaping- in an arch, like an arrow out of a bow. 
And I thought it was lightninjij ; but when it came 
near the shadowy pillar, it sank slowly down beside 
it, and changed into the shape of a woman, very 
beautiful, and with a strength of deep calm in her 
blue eyes. She was robed to the feet with a white 
robe ; and above that, to her knees, by the cloud 
which I had seen across the sun; but all the golden 
ripples of it had become plumes, so that it had 
changed into two bright wings like those of a vul- 
ture, which wrapped round her to her knees. She 
had a weaver's shuttle hanging over her shoulder, 
by the thread of it, and in her left hand, arrows, 
tipped with fire. . . . 

And Neith drew herself to her height ; and I 
heard a clashing pass through the plumes of her 
wings, and the asp stood up on her helmet, and fire 
gathered in her eyes. And she took one of the 
flaming arrows out of the sheaf in her left hand, 
and stretched it out over the heaps of claj'. And 
they rose up like flights of locusts, and spread 
themselves in the air, so that it grew dark in a mo- 
ment. Then Neith designed them places with her 
arrow point ; and they drew into ranks, like dark 
clouds laid level at morning. Then Neith pointed 
with her arrow to the north, and to the south, and 
to the east, and to the west, and the flying motes of 
earth drew asunder into four great ranked crowds ; 
and stood, one in the north, and one in the south, 
and one in the east, and one in the west — one 
against another. Then Neith spread her wings 
wide for an instant, and closed them with a sound 
like the sound of a rushing sea ; and waved her 
hand towards the foundation of the pyramid, where 
it was laid -on the brow of the desert. And the four 
flocks drew together and sank down, like sea-birds 
settling to a level rock ; and when they met, there 
Avas a sudden flame, as broad as the pyramid, and 
as high as the clouds ; and it dazzled me ; and I 



518 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

closed my eyes foi' an instant ; and when I looked 
again, the pyramid stood on its rock, perfect ; and 
l^urple with the liglit from the edge of the sinking 
sun. — Ethics of the Dust, pp. 25-28. 



FICTION. 

A Greek Vase the Type op right Fiction.— 
The best type of right fiction is a Greek vase, planned 
rigorously, rounded smoothly, balanced symmetri- 
cally, handled handily, lipped softly for pouring 
out oil and wine. Painted daintily at last with 
images of eternal things. " For ever shalt thou 
love, and she be fair." 

"Planned rigorously" — I press the conditions 
again one by one — it must be, as ever Memphian 
labyrinth or Norman fortress. Intricacy full of 
delicate surprise ; covered way in secrecy of accur- 
ate purposes, not a stone useless, nor a word, nor 
an incident thrown away. — " Roundf^d smoothly" 
— the wheel of Fortune revolving with it in unfelt 
swiftness ; like the world, its story rising like the 
dawn, closing like the sunset, with its own sweet 
light for every hour. — "Balanced symmetrically" 
—having its two sides clearly separate, its war of 
good and evil rightly divided. Its figures moving 
in majestic law of light and shade. — "Handled 
handily" so that, being careful and gentle, you can 
take easy gTasp of it and all that it contains. . . . 
— "Lipped softly" — full of kindness and comfort. 
All beautiful fiction is of the Madonna. 

Taking thus the Greek vase at its best time, for 
the symbol of fair fiction : of foul, you may find 
in the great entrance-room of the Louvre, filled with 
the luxurious orfhwerie of the sixteenth century 
types perfect and innumerable : Satyrs carved in 
serpentine, Gorgons platted in gold, Furies with 
eyes of ruby, Scyllas with scales of pearl ; infinite- 
ly worthless toil, infinitely witless wickedness ; 
pleasure satiated with idiocy, passion provoked 



NATURE AND LITERATURE— LITERATURE. olO 

into madness, no object of thought, or sight, or fan- 
cy, but horror, mutilation, distortion, corruption, 
agony of war, insolence of disgrace, and misery of 
death. — Fiction — Fair and Foul, in Nineteeiith Cen- 
tury, 1881, p. 516. 

Thk Literature of the Prison House.— The 
pleasure which we may conceive taken by the chil- 
dren of the coming time, in the analysis of physical 
corruption, guides, into fields more dangerous and 
desolate, the expatiation of imaginative literature : 
and the reactions of moral disease upon itself, and 
the conditions of languid Ij^ monstrous character 
developed in an atmosphei'e of low vitality, have 
become the most valued material of modern fiction, 
and the most eagerly di.scussed texts of modern 
philosophy. . . . 

In the single novel of Bleak House there are nine 
deaths (or left for d-eaths, in the drop scene) care- 
fully Avrought out or led up to, either by way of 
pleasing surprise, as the baby's at the brickmaker's, 
or finished in their threatenings and sufferings, 
with as much enjoyment as can be contrived in the 
anticipation, and as much pathology as can be con- 
centrated in the description. Under the following 
varieties of method : — 

One by assassination, Mr. Tulkinghorn. — One by 
starvation, with phthisis, Joe.— One by chagrin, 
Richard. — One by spontaneous combustion, Mr. 
Krook. — One by sorrow, Lady Dedlock's lover. — • 
One by remorse. Lady Dedlock. — One by insanity, 
Miss Flite. — One by paralysis. Sir Leicester. — Be- 
sides the baby, by fever, and a lively young French- 
Avoman left to be hanged. . . . 

In the work of the great masters death is always 
either heroic, deserved, or quiet and natural (unless 
their purpose be totally and deeply tragic, when 
collateral meaner death is perinitted, like that of 
Polonius or Uoderigo). In 014 Mortality, four of 
the deaths — BothwelTs, Ensign Grahame's, Mac- 
briar's, and Evandale's — are magnificently heroic ; 
Burley's and Oliphant's long deserved, and swift ; 
the troopers', met in the discharge of their military 



520 A BUSKIJSr ANTHOLOGY. 

duty ; and the old miser's, as gentle as the i^asslng 
of a cloud, and almost beautiful in its last words of 
— now unselfish— care. . . . 

In modern stories prepared for more refined or 
fastidious audiences than those of Dickens, the 
funereal excitement is obtained, for the most part, 
not by the infliction of violent or disgusting death ; 
but in the suspense, the pathos, and the more or 
less by all felt, and recognized, mortal phenomena 
of the sick-room. The temptation, to weak writers, 
of this order of subject is especially gi-eat, because 
the study of it from the living — or dying — model is 
so easy, and to many has been the most impressive 
part of their own personal experience ; while, if the 
description be given even with mediocre accuracy, 
a very large section of readers will admire its truth, 
and cherish its melancholy. . . . But the masters 
of strong imagination disdain such work, and those 
of deep sensibility, shrink from it.* Only under 
conditions of personal weakness, presently to be 
noted, would Scott comply with the cravings of his 
lower audience in scenes of terror like the death of 
Front-de-Boeuf. But he never once witlidrew the 
sacred curtain of the sick-chamber, nor permitted 
the disgrace of wanton tears round the humiliation 
of strength, or the wreck of beauty. . . . 

The effectual head of the whole cretinous school 
is the renowned novel in which the hunchbacked 
lover watches the execution of his mistress from the 
tower of Notre Dame ; and its strength passes grad- 
ually away into the anatomical jjreparations, for 
the general market, of novels like Poor 3Iiss Finch, 
in which the heroine is blind, the hero epileptic, 
and the obnoxious brother is found dead, with his 
hands dro^jped off, in the Arctic regions. . . . 

There is some excuse, indeed, for the pathologic 
labor of the modern novelist in the fact that h« 



* Nell, in the Old Curiosity S?iop,.was simply kiiled for the 
market, as a butcher kills a lamb (see Fovster's Life), and Paul 
was wi'itten under the same conditions of illness which affected 
Scott — a part of the ominous palsies, grasping alike author and 
subject, both in Dc.mhey and Litth' Duriit. 



NATURE AND LITERATURE -LlTEIiA.TUIiE. 521 

cannot easily, in a city population, find a lieaitliy 
mind to vivisect : but the greater part of such ama- 
teur surgery is the struggle, in an epoch of wild lit- 
erary competition, to obtain novelty of material. 
The varieties of aspect and color in healthy fruit, 
be it sweet or sour, may be within certain limits de- 
scribed exhaustively. Not so the blotches of its 
conceivable hlh^Xxt.— Fiction -Fair and Foul, pp. 
5-16. 

The Mill on the Floss, is perhaps the most striking 
instance extant of this study of cutaneous disease. 
There is not a single person in the book of the 
smallest importance to anybody in the world but 
themselves, or whose qualities deserved so much as 
a line of printer's type in their description. —i^tciimi 
—Fair and Foul, in Nineteenth Century, October, 
1881, p. 530. 



SCOTT AND HIS NOVELS. 

The excellence of Scott's work is precisely in pro- 
portion to the degree in which it is sketched from 
present nature. His fau)iliar life is inimitable ; his 
quiet scenes of introductory conversation, as the 
beginning of Rob Roy and Redgauntlet, and all his 
living Scotch characters, mean or noble, from An- 
drew Fairservico to Jeanie Deans, are simply right, 
and can never be bettered. But his romance and 
antiquarianism, his knighthood and monkery, are 
Jill false, and he knows them to be false ; does not 
care to make them earnest ; enjoys them for their 
strangeness, but laughs at his own antiquarianism. 

It is pre-eminently in his faults and weaknesses 
that Scott is representative of the mind of his age : 
and because he is the greatest man born amongst 
us, and intended for the enduring type of us, all our 
principal faults must be laid on his shoulders, and 
he must bear down the dark marks to the latest 
a""es. . . . Nothing is more notable or sorrowful in 
Scott's mind than its incapacity of steady belief iu 



522 A BUSiay ANTHOLOGY. 

anything. ... He neither cared for painting nor 
sculpture, and was totally incapable of forming a 
judgment about them. . . . Throughout all his 
work there is no evidence of any purpose but to 
while away the hour. — Modem Painters, III., pp. 
288-390. 

The " dulness " which many modern readers 
inevitably feel, and some modern blockheads think 
it creditable to allege in Scott, consists not a little 
in his absolute piirity from every loathsome ele- 
ment or excitement of the lower passions. — Nine- 
teenth Century, Oct. 1881, p. 520. 

Scott at Ashestiel.— Sir Walter Scott's life, in 
the full strength of it at Ashestiel, and early at Ab- 
botsford, with his literaiy work done by ten, or at 
latest twelve, in the morning ; and the rest of the 
day spent in useful work with Tom Purdie in his 
woods, is a model of wise moral management of 
mind and body, for men of true literary power. — 
Fors, III., p. 241. 

The house of Ashestiel itself is only three or four 
miles above the junction of Tweed and Ettrick. It 
has been sorrowfully changed since Sir Walter's 
death, but the essential make and set of the former 
building can still be traced. 

There is more excuse for Scott's flitting to Abbots- 
ford than I had guessed, for this house stands, con- 
scious of the river rather than commanding it, on a 
brow of meadowy bank, falling so steeply to the 
water that nothing can be seen of it from the win- 
dows. Beyond, the pasture-land rises steej^ three 
or four hundred feet against the northern sky, 
while behind the house, south and east, the moor- 
lands lift themselves in gradual distance to still 
greater height, so that virtually neither sunrise nor 
sunset can be seen from the dee^D-nested dwelling. 
A tricklet of stream wavers to and fro down to it 
from the moor, through a grove of entirely natural 
wood — oak, birch, and ash, fantastic and bewilder- 
ing, but nowhere gloomy or decayed, and carpeted 
with anemone. Between this wild avenue and the 



NATURE AND LITERATURE— LITERATURE. 523 

house, the old garden remains as it used to be, 
large, gracious, and tranquil ; its high walls swept 
round it in a curving line like a war raujpart, fol- 
lowing the ground ; the fruit-trees, trained a cen- 
tury since, now with gray trunks a foot wide, flat- 
tened to the wall like sheets of crag ; the strong 
bars of their living trellis charged, when I saw 
them, with clusters of green-gage, soft bloomed into 
gold and blue ; and of orange-pink magnum bo- 
num, and crowds of ponderous pear, countless as 
leaves. Some open space of grass and path, now 
all redesigned for modern needs, must always have 
divided the garden from what was properly the 
front of the house, where the main entrance is now, 
between' advanced wings, of which only the west- 
Avard one is of Sir Walter's time: its ground floor 
being the drawing-room, with his own bedroom of 
equal size above, cheerful and luminous both, en- 
filading the house front with their large side win- 
dows, which commanded the sweep of Tweed dow© 
the valley, and some high masses of Ettrick Forest 
beyond, this view being now mostly shut olT by the 
opposite wing, added for symmetry ! But Sir Wal- 
ter saw it fair through the morning clouds when he 
rose, holding himself, nevertheless, altogether re- 
gardless of it, when once at work. 

At Ashestiel and Abbotsford alike, his workroom 
is strictly a writing-office, what windows they have 
being designed to admit the needful light, with an 
extremely narrow vista of the external M^orld. 
Courtyard at Abbotsford, and bank of young wood 
beyond : nothing at Ashestiel but the green turf of 
the opposite fells, with the sun on it, if sun there 
were, and silvery specks of passing sheep. 

The room itself, Scott's true " memorial" if the 
Scotch people had heart enough to know him, or 
remember, is a small parlor on the ground-floor oi 
the north side of the house, some twelve feet deep 
by eleven wide ; the single window little more than 
four feet square, or rather four feet cube, above the 
desk, which is set in the recess of the niossy wall, 
the light thus enteriiig in front of the writer, and 



524 A JIUSKIN- ANTHOLOGY, 

reflected a little from each side. This window is set 
to the left in the end wall, leaving a breadth of 
some five feet or a little more on the fireplace side, 
where now, brought here from Abbotsford, stands 
the garden chair of the last days. 

Contentedly, in such space and splendor of domi- 
cile, the three great poems were written, Waverley 
begun ; and all the make and tenure of his mind 
confirmed, as it was to remain, or revive, through 
after time of vanity, ti'ouble, and decay. A small 
chamber, with a fair world outside ? — such are the 
conditions, as far as I know or can gather, of all 
greatest and best mental work. — Fo7'Sf IV., pp. 
349-351. 

Scott's choicest Romances.— The memorable 
romances of Scott are eighteen, falling into three 
distinct groups, containing six each. The first group 
is distinguished from the other two by characters 
of strength and felicity which never more appeared 
after Scott was struck down by his terrifie illness in 
1819. It includes Waverley, Guy llannering, The 
Antiquary, Kob Boy, Old Mortality, and The Heart 
of Midlothian. ■ ■ . The second group, composed 
in the three years subsequent to illness all but mor- 
tal, bear every one of them more or less the seal of 
it. They consist of the Bride of Lammermoor, Ivan- 
hoe, the 3Ionastery , the Abbot, Kenilworth, and the 
Pirate. The marks of broken health on all these 
are essentially twofold — prevailing melancholy, and 
fantastic improbability. . . . 

The last series contains two quite noble ones, 
Redgaimtlet and Nigel ; two of very high value, 
Quentin Durward and Woodstock ; and finally, the 
Jfonastery, and the Abbot. — Fiction — Fair and Foul, 
pp. 22-25. 

Why Scott's Heroes are Milk-Sops.— Scott 
lived in a country and time, when, from highest 
to lowest, but chiefly in that dignified and nobly 
severe middle class to which he himself belonged, a 
habit of serene and stainless thought was as natural 
to the people as their mountain air. Women like 



NATURE ANT) LITERATUBB-LITEPxATURE. 525 

Rose Bradwartline and Ailie Dinmorit were the 
grace and guard of almost every household (God be 
praised that the race of theiu is not yet extinct, for 
all that Mall or Boulevard can do), and it has 
perhaps escaped the notice of even attentive readers 
that the comparatively uninteresting character of 
Sir Walter's heroes had always been studied among 
a class of youths who were simply incapable of doing 
anything seriously wrong ; and could only be em- 
barrassed by the consequences of their levity or 
imprudence. — Fictinn — Fair and Foul, pp. 18, 19. 

The Vernacular in Scott's Novels.— The care- 
ful study of one sentence of Andrew Fairservice, in 
Rob Roy, will give us a good deal to think of. I take 
this account of the rescue of Gflasgow Cathedral at 
the time of the Refoi-mation. 

Ah ! it's a brave kirk — nane o' yere wigmaleeries 
and curliewurlies and opensteek hems about it — a' 
solid, Aveeljointed mason-wark, that will stand as 
lang as the warld, keep hands and guupowther 
atf it. It had amaist a douncome lang syne at the 
Reformation, when they i^u'd doun the kirks of St. 
Andrews and Perth, and thereawa', to cleanse them 
o' Papery and idolatry, and image-worship, and 
siir[)lices, and sielike rags o' the muckle hure that 
sitteth on seven hills, as if ane wasna braid eneugh 
for her auld hinder end. Sae the commons o' Ren- 
frew, and o' the Barony, and the Gorbals, and a' 
about, they behoved to come into Glasgow ae fair 
morning, to try their hand on purging the High 
Kirk o' Popish nicknackets. But the townsmen o' 
(xlasgow, they were feared their auld edifice might 
sli[) the girths in gaun through siccan rough physic, 
sae they rang the common bell, and assembled the 
train-bands wi' took o' drum. By good luck, the 
'worthy Jauies Rabat was Dean o' Guild that year 
— (and a gude mason he was himsell, made him the 
keener to keep up the auld bigging), and the trades 
assembled, and offered downright battle to the 
commons, rather than their kirk should coup the 
crans, as others had done elsewhere. It wasna fur 
hive o' Paperie — na, na ! — nane could ever say that 
o' the trades o' Glasgow.— Sae they sune came to 
an agreement to take a' the idolatrous statues of 
sants (sorrow be on them !) out o' their neuks. — 
And sae the bits o' stane idols were broken in pieces 



526 A BUSKiy ANTHOLOGY. 

by Seripture warrant, and flung into the Molendi- 
nar burn, and the anld kirk stood as crouse as a 
cat when the flaes are kainied aff her, and a' body 
was ahke pleased. And I hae heard wise folks say, 
that if the same had been done in ilka kirk in Scot- 
land, the Reform wad just hae been as pure as it is 
e'en now, and we wad hae mair Christian-like 
kirks; for I hae been sae lang in England, that 
naething will drived out o' my head, that the dog- 
kennel at Usbaldistone-Hall is better than mony a 
house o' God in Scotland. 

Now this sentence is in the first place a piece of 
Scottish history of quite inestimable and concen- 
trated value. Andrew's temperament is the type 
of a vast class of Scottish — shall we call it " sow- 
thistlian " — mind, which necessarily takes the view 
of either Pope or saint that the thistle in Lebanon 
took of the cedar or lilies in Lebanon ; and the entire 
force of the passions Avhich, in the Scottish revolu- 
tion foretold and forearmed the French one, is told 
in this one jiaragraph; the coarseness of it, observe, 
being admitted, not for the sake of the laugh, any 
more than an onion in broth merelj^ for its flavor, 
but for the meat of it ; the inherent constancy of 
that coarseness being a fact in this order of mind, 
and an essential part of the history to be told. 

Secondly, observe that this speech, in the religious 
passion of it, such as there may be, is entirely sin- 
cere. Andrew is a thief, a liar, a coward, and, in 
the Fair service from which he takes his name, a 
hypocrite ; but in the form of prejudice, which is 
all that his mind is capable of in the place of relig- 
ion, he is entirely sincere. lie does not in the least 
l^retend detestation of image worship to please his 
master, or any one else ; he honestly scorns the 
'• carnal morality as dowd and fusionless as rue- 
leaves at Yule" of the sermon in the ujiper cathe- 
dral ; and Avhen wrapt in critical attention to the 
"real savour o' doctrine" in the crypt, so com- 
pletely forgets the hypocrisy of his fair service as 
to return his master's attempt to disturb him with 
liard punches of the elbow. 

Thirdly. He is a man of nO mean sagacity, quite 



NATURE AND LITER ATUliE— LITERATURE. 527 

up to the average standard of Scottish common 
sense— not a low one; and, though incapable of 
understanding any manner of lofty thought or 
passion, is a shrewd measurer of weaknesses, and 
not without a spark or two of kindly feeling. See 
first his sketch of his master's character to Mr. 
Hammorgaw, beginning: "He's no a'thegither sae 
void o' sense, neither ; " and then the close of the 
dialogue : " But the lad's no a bad lad after a', and 
he needs some carefu' body to look after him." 

Fourthly. He is a good workman ; knows his 
own business well, and can judge of other craft, if 
sound, or otherwise.— All these four qualities of 
him must be known before we can understand this 
single speech. Keeping them in mind, I take it up, 
word by word. 

You observ^e, in the outset, Scott makes no at- 
tempt whatever to indicate accents or modes of 
pronunciation by changed spelling, unless the 
word becomes a quite definitely new and scarcely 
writeable one. The Scottish way of pronouncing 
" .James," for instance, is entirely i^eculiar, and ex- 
tremely pleasant to the ear. But it is so, just be- 
cause it does not change the word into Jeems, nor 
into Jims, nor into Jawms. A modern writer of 
dialects would think it amusing to use one or other 
of these ugly spellings. But Scott writes the name 
in pure English, knowing that a Scots reader will 
speak it rightly, and an English one be wise in let- 
ting it alone. On the other hand he writes weel 
for " well," because that word is complete in its 
change, and may be very closely expressed by the 
double e. The ambiguous li's in gude and sune 
are admitted, because far liker the sound than the 
double M'ould be, and that in hure for grace' 
sake, to soften the word j— so also flaes for " fleas." 
Mony for "many" is again ijositively right in 
sound, and neiik differs from our " nook " in sense, 
and is not the same word at all. 

Secondly, observe, not a word is corrupted in any 
indecent haste, slowness, slovenliness, or incapacity 
of pronunciation. There is no lisping, drawling, 



528 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY, 

slobbering, or snuffling : the speech is as clea^r as a 
bell and as keen as an arrow : and its elisions and 
contractions are either melodious, {na, for " not,"— 
pu'd, for "pulled,") or as normal as in a Latin 
verse. The long words are delivered without the 
slightest bungling ; and higging finished to its 
last g. 
I take the important words now in their places. 
Brave. — The old English sense of the word in " to 
go brave" retained, expressing Andrew's sincere 
and respectful admiration. Had he meant to insin- 
viate a hint of the church's being too fine, he would 
have said hraw. 

Kirk. — This is of course just as pure and unpro- 
vincial a word as Kirche, or 6glise. 

Wliigmal eerie. — I cannot get at the root of this 
word, but it is one showing that the speaker is not 
bound by classic rules, but will use any syllables 
that enrich his meaning. Nipperty-tipperty (of his 
master's "poetry-nonsense") is another word of 
the same class. Curliewurlie is of course just as pure 
as Shakespeare's " Hurly-burly." 

Opensteek hem.s. — More description, or better of 
the later Gothic cannot be put into four syllables. 
Steek, melodious for stitch, has a combined sense 
of closing or fastening. And note that the later 
Gothic, being precisely what Scott knew best (in 
Melrose) and liked best, it is, here as elsewhere, 
quite as much himself as Frank, that he is laugh- 
ing at, when he laughs witJi Andrew, whose open- 
steek hems are only a ruder metaphor for his own 
" willow-wreaths changed to stone." 

Gunpowther. — Ther is a lingering vestige of the 
French " -dre " 

Syne. — One of the melodious and mysterious 
Scottish words which have partly the sound of 
wind and stream in them, and partly the range of 
softened idea, which is like a distance of blue hills 
over border land (" far in the distant Cheviot's 
blue.") Perhaps even the least sympathetic " Eng- 
lisher " might recognize this, if he heard " Old Long 
Since" vocally substituted for the Scottish words 



NATURE AND LITEEATUEE-LITERATURE. 529 

to the air. I do not know the root ; but the word's 
Ijroper nieanins" is not " since," but before or after 
an interval of some duration, " as weel sune as 
syne." "But first on Sawnie gies a ca', Syne, 
bauldly in she enters." 

Behoved {to come).— A rich word, with pecuhar 
idiom, always used more or less ironically of any- 
thing done under a partly mistaken and partly pre- 
tended notion of duty. 

^'iicmn.—FnY prettier, and fuller in meaning than 
" such. " It contains an added sense of wonder ; 
and means properly " so great" or " so unusual." 

Took (o' rfmm)-— Classical "tuck" from Itahan 
toccata, the preluding " touch " or flourish, on any 
instrument (but see Johnson under word " tucket," 
quoting Othello). The deeper Scottish vowels are 
used here to mark the deeper sound of the bass 
drum, as in more solemn Avarning. 

Biggiug.— The only word in all the sentence of 
which the Scottish form is less melodious than the 
English, " and what for no," seeing that Scottish 
architecture is mostly little beyond Bessie Bell's 
and Mary Gray's ? " They biggit a bow're by yon 
burn'ide, and theekit it ow're wi' rashes." But it 
is pure Anglo-Saxon in roots ; see glossary to Fair- 
bairn's edition of the Douglas Virgil, 1710. 

Coup. — Another of the much-embracing words ; 
short for •' upset," but with a sense of awkwardness 
as the inherent cause of fall; compare Richie Moni- 
plies (also for sense of " behoved "): " Ae auld 
hirplin deevil of a potter behoved just to step in my 
way, and offer me a pig (earthern pot^etym. dub.), 
as he said 'just to put my Scotch ointment in ; ' 
and I gave him a push, as but natural, and the tot- 
tering deevil coupit owre amang his own pigs, and 
damaged a score of them." So also Dandle Din- 
mont in the postchaise : " 'Od ! I hope they'll no 
coup us." 

The Crans. — Idiomatic ; root unknown to me, 
but it means in this use, full, total, and without 
recovery. 

Molendinar .—Yvoui molendinuni, '"the grinding- 



530 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

place." I do not know if actually the local name,, 
or Scott's invention. Compare Sir Piercie's Molin- 
aras. But at all events used here with by-sense of 
degradation of the formerly idle saints to grind at 
the mill. 

Crouse. — Courageous, softened Avith a sense of 
comfort. 

Ilka. — Again a word with azure distance, includ- 
ing the whole sense of " each " and " every." The 
reader must carefully and reverently distinguish 
these comprehensive words, which gather two or 
more perfectly understood meanings into one chord 
of meaning, and are harmonies more than words, 
from the above noted blunders between two half- 
hit meanings, struck as a bad i^iano-player strikes 
the edge of another note. In English we have 
fewer of these combined thoughts ; so that Shake- 
speare rather plays with the distinct lights of his 
words, than melts them into one. So again Bishop 
Douglas spells, and doubtless spoke, the word 
" rose," differently, according to his purpose ; if as 
the chief or governing ruler of flowers, rois, but if 
only in her own beauty, rose. 

Christian-like.— The sense of the decency and 
order proper to Christianity is stronger in Scotland 
than in any other country, and the word "Chris- 
tian " more distinctly opposed to " beast." Hence 
the back-handed cut at the English for their over- 
pious care of dogs. — Fiction — Fair a7id Foul, pp. 
87-33. 



POEMS BY RUSKIN. 

SALTZBURG. 

On Salza's quiet tide the westei-iiig sun 

Gleams mildly; and the lengthening shadows dun, 

Chequered with ruddy streaks from spire and roof, 

Begin to weave fair twilight's mystic woof, 

Till the dim tissue, like a gorgeous veil, 

Wraps the proud city, in her beauty pale. 

A minute since, and in the rosy light 

Dome, casement, spire, were glowing warm and bright; 

A minute since, St. Rupert's stately shrine, 

Rich with the spoils of many a Nartzwald mine, 



AUTOBIOGRArHICAL. 531 

Flung back the golden glow; now, broad tiud vast, 
The shadows from yon ancient fortress cast, 
Like the dark grasp of some barbaric power, 
Their leaden empire stretch o'er roof and tower. 

— Poems, p. 7. 

THE OLD "WATER-WIIKEL. 

It lies beside the river; where its marge 
Is black with many an old and oarlcss barge, 
And yeasty filth, and leafage wild and rank 
Stagnate and batten by the crumbling bank. 

Once, slow revolving by the industrious mill, 
It murmured, only on the S.ibbath still; 
And evening winds its pulse-like beating bore 
Down the soft vale, and by the winding shoi'e. 

Sparkling around its orbed motion flew. 
With quick, fresh fall, the drops of dashing dew, 
Through noon-tide heat that gentle rain was flung, 
And verdant round the summer herbage sprung. 

Now dancing light and sounding motion cease. 
In these dark liours of cold continual peace; 
Through its black bars the unbroken moonlightflows, 
And dry winds howl about its long repose ; 

And mouldering lichens creep, and mosses gray 
Cling around its arms, in gradual decay, 
Amidst the hum of men — which doth not suit 
That shadowy circle, motionless and mute. 

So, by the sleep of many a human heart. 
The crowd of men may bear their busy part, 
Where withered, or forgotten, or subdued. 
Its noisy passions have left solitude. 

— Poeins, p. 109. 



CHAPTER III. 

Autobiographical.* 

I never wrote a letter in my life which all the 
world are not welcome to read if they will. — Fors, 
III., p. 65. 

I never read anything in si^ring-time (except the 
Ai, Ai, on the "sanguine-flower inscribed Avith 
woe "). — Time and Tide, p. 74. 

* Compare the Introduction to this volume. 



532 A IWSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

Nearly everything that I ever did of any use in 
this world has been done contrarj'^ to the advice of 
uiy friends ; and as my friends are unanimous at 
present in begging me never to write to news- 
papers, I am somewhat under the impression that 
I ought to resign my Oxford professorship, and try 
to get a sub-editorship in the Telegraph. — Fors, I., 
p. 384. 

Love of Money. — I never part with a new sover- 
eign without a sigh : and if it were not that I am 
afraid of thieves, I would positively and seriously, 
at this moment, turn all I have into gold of the 
newest, and dig a hole for it in my garden, and go 
and look at it every morning and evening, like the 
man in ^sop's Fables, or Silas Mai^ier. — Fors, I., 
p. 329. 

His Medieval Tendencies. — I am no warped 
witness, as far as regards monasteries ; or if I am, 
it is in their favor. I have always had a strong 
leaning that way ; and have pensively shivered 
with Augustines at St. Bernard; and happily made 
hay with Franciscans at Fesolt^ ; and sat silent 
Avith Carthusians in their little gardens, south of 
Florence ; and mourned through many a day- 
dream, at Melrose and Bolton. But the Avonder is 
always to me, not how much, but how little, the 
monks have, on the Avhole, done, with all that lei- 
sure, and all that good- will. — Ethics of the Dust, 
p. 92. 

Stealthy Charity. — All the clergy in London 
have been shrieking against alms-giving to the 
lower poor this whole Avinter long, till lam obliged, 
Avhenever I Avant to give anybody a penny, to look 
up and doAvn the street first, to see if a clergyman 's 
coming. — Fors, L, p. 48. 

Capital PuNiSHMENT.^One of my best friends 
has just gone mad ; and all the rest say I am mad 
myself. But, if ever I murder anybody — and, in- 
deed, there are numbers of people I should like to 
murder — I won't say that I ought to be hanged; for 
I think nobody but a bishop or a bank-director cau 



AUTOBIOGIlAnilCAL. 533 

evei- be rogue enough to deserve hanging ; but I 
particularly, and with all that is left me of what I 
imagine to be sound mind, request that I may be 
immediately shot. — Fors, II., p. 319. 

St. Brun^o's Lilies. — There was a pretty young 
English lady at the table d'hote, in the Hotel du 
Mont Blanc at St. Martin's [1860], and I wanted to 
get speech of her, and didn't know how. So all I 
could think of was to go half-way up the Aiguille 
de Varens, to gather St. Bruno's lilies ; and I made 
a great cluster of them, and put wild roses all 
around them as I came down. I never saw anything 
so lovely ; and I thought to present this to her be- 
fore dinner, — but when I got down, she had gone 
away to Chamouni. My Fors always treated me 
like that in affairs of the heart. — Proserpina, p. 11. 

The Charge that he contradicts Himself.— 
Perhaps some of my hearers this evening may oc- 
casionally have heard it stated of me that I am 
rather apt to contradict myself. I hope I am ex- 
ceedingly apt to do so. I never met with a question 
yet, of any importance, which did not need, for -the 
I'ight solution of it, at least one positive and one 
negative answer, like an equation of the second de- 
gree. Mostly, matters of any consequence are three- 
sided, or four-sided, or polygonal ; and the trotting 
round a polygon is severe work for people any way 
stiff in their opinions.— Ca//2,6r«'f?^e Inaugural Ad- 
dress, p. 12. 

A Communist of the Old School.— For, indeed, 
I am myself a Communist of the old school— reddest 
also of the red ; and was on the very point of say- 
ing so at the end of my last letter ; only the tele- 
gram about the Louvre's being on fire stopped me, 
because I thought the Communists of the new 
school, as I could not at all understand them, might 
not quite understand me. For we Communists of 
the old school think that our property belongs to 
everybody, and everj'body's property to us ; so of 
course I thought the Louvre belonged to me as 
much as to the Parisians, and expected they would 



534 A R US KIN ANTHOLOGY. 

have sent word over to me, being an Art Professor, 
to ask whether I wanted it burnt down. But no 
message or intimation to that elTect ever reached 
me.—Fors, I., p. 87. 

Not altogether a Conservative. — Consider 
the ridiculousness of the division of parties into 
" Liberal " and " Conservative." There is no op- 
position whatever between those two kinds of men. 
There is opposition between Liberals and Illiberals; 
that is to say, between people who desire liberty, 
and vvho dislike it. I am a violent Illiberal ; but it 
does not follow that I must be a Conservative. A 
Conservative is a person who wishes to keep things 
as they are ; and he is opposed to a Destructive, 
who wishes to destroy them, or to an Innovator, 
who wishes to alter them. Noav, though I am an 
Illiberal, there are many things I should like to de- 
stroy. I should like to destroj' most of the railroads 
in England, and all the i-ailroads in Wales. I 
should like to destroy and rebuild the Houses of 
Parliament, the National Gallery, and the East End 
of London ; and to destroy, without rebuilding, the 
new town of Edinburgh, the north suburb of Gen- 
eva, and the city of New York. Thus in many 
things I am the reverse of Conservative; nay, there 
are some long-established things which I hope to 
see changed before I die ; but I Avant still to keep 
the fields of England green, and her cheeks red ; 
and that girls should l)e taught to curtsey, and boys 
to take. their hats off, Avhen a professor or otherwise 
dignified person passes by : and that kings should 
keep their crowns on their heads, and bishops their 
crosiers in their hands ; and should duly recognize 
the significance of the crown, and the use of the 
crook. — Foi'S, I., p. 5. 

Apologia pro Vita Sua.— Because I have passed 
my life in alms giving, not in fortune hunting; 
because I have labored always for the honor of 
others, not my own. and have chosen rather to 
make men look to Turner and Luini than to form 
or exhibit the skill of my. own hand; because I 



AUTOBIOGKAPIIICAL. 535 

have lowered my rents, and assured the comforta- 
ble lives of uiy poor tenants, instead of taking from 
them all I could force for the roofs they needed; 
because I love a wood-walk better than a London 
street, and would rather watch a seagull fly than 
shoot it, and rather hear a thrush sing than eat 
it ; finally, because I never disobej^ed my mother, 
because I have honored all women with solemn 
worship, and have been kind even to the unthank- 
ful and the evil, therefore the hacks of English art 
and literature wag their heads at me, and the poor 
wretch who pawns the dirty linen of his soul daily 
for a bottle of sour wine and a cigar, talks of the 
" effeminate sentimentality of Ruskin."— For,s, II., 
p. 195. 

The Bewickiax little Pig.— Mr. Leslie Stephen 
rightly says how much better it is to have a thick 
skin and a good digestion. Yes, assuredly ; but 
what is the use of knowing that, if one hasn't? 
In one of my saddest moods, only a week or two ago, 
because I had failed twice over in drawing the 
lifted hand of Giotto's " Poverty ; " utterly beaten 
and comfortless, at Assisi, I got some wholesome 
peace and refreshment by mere sympathy with a 
Bewiekian little pig in the roundest and conceited- 
est burst of pig-blossom. His servant— a grave old 
woman, with much sorrow and toil in the wrinkles 
of he?' skin, while his was only dimpled in its divine 
thickness— was leading him, with magnanimous 
length of rope, down a grassy path behind the con- 
vent ; stopping, of course, where he chose. Stray 
stalks and leaves of eatable things, in various 
stages of ambrosial rottenness, lay here and there ; 
the convent walls made more savory by their fumi- 
gation, as Mr. Leslie Stephen says the Alpine pines 
are by his cigar. And the little joyful darling of 
Demeter shook his curly tail, and munched ; and 
gruuted the goodnaturedest of grunts, and snuf- 
fled the approvingest of snuffles, and was a balm 
and beatification to behold ; and I would fain have 
changed places with him for a little while, or with 



5Se A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

Mr. Leslie Stephen for a little while — at luncheon, 
suppose — anywhere but among the Alps. But it 
can't he.—Fors, II., p. 307. 

A SCHOLARLY ReCLUSB AND SCIENTIFIC ANA- 
LYST. — It is peremptorily not my business — it is 
not my gift, bodily or mentally — to look after other 
peoples sorroAv, I have enough of my own ; and 
even if I had not, the sight of pain is not good for 
me. I don't want to be a bishop. In a most literal 
and sincere sense, " nolo episcopari.^^ I don't M^ant 
to be an almoner, nor a counsellor, nor a Member 
of Parliament, nor a voter for Members of Par- 
liament. (What would Mr. Holyoake say to me if he 
knew that I had never voted for anybody in my 
life, and never mean to do so !) I am essentially a 
l^ainter and a leaf dissector ; and my powers of 
thought are all purely mathematical, seizing ulti- 
mate principles only — never accidents ; a line is 
always, to me, length without breadth ; it is not a 
cable or a crowbar ; and though I can almost 
infallibly reason out the final law of anything, if 
within reach of my industry, I neither care for, nor 
can trace, the minor exigencies of its daily appli- 
ance. So, in every way, I like a quiet life ; and I 
don't like seeing people ci-y, or die ; and should 
rejoice, more than I can tell you, in giving up the 
full half of my fortune for the poor, provided 1 
knew that the public would make Lord Overstone 
also give the half of his, and other people who 
were independent give the half of theirs ; and then 
set men who were I'eally fit for such office to admin- 
ister the fund, and answer to us for nobody's perish- 
ing innocently ; and so leave us all to do Avhat we 
chose with the rest, and with our days, in i^eace. — 
Time and Tide, p. 83. 

RusKiN AS A Publisher.— I am not in the least 
minded to compete for your audience with the 
" ojiinions " in your damp journals, morning and 
evening, the black of them coming off on your 
fingers, and beyond all washing, into your brains. 
It is no affair of mine whether you attend to me or 



AUTOBIOGIiAPHICAL. 537 

not ; but yours whollj' ; my hand is weary of pen- 
holding, my heart is siclc of tliinking ; for uiy own 
part, I would not write you these pamphlets* 
though you would give me a barrel of beer, instead 
of two pints, for them ; — I write them Avholly for 
your sake ; I choose that you shall have them 
decently printed on cream-colored paper, and with 
a margin underneath, which you can write on, if 
you like. That is also for your sake ; it is a proper 
form of book for any man to have who can keep 
his books clean ; and if he cannot, he has no busi- 
ness v.dth books at all ; it costs me ten pounds to 
print a thousand copies, and five more to give you 
a picture ; and a penny ofl' my sevenpence to send 
you the book — a thousand sixpences are twenty-five 
pounds ; when you have bought a thousand Forsot 
me, I shall therefore have five pounds for my trouble 
, — and my single shopman, Mr. Allen, five pounds for 
his ; we won't work for less, either of us ; not that 
we would not, were it good for j^ou ; but it would 
be by no means good. And I mean to sell all my 
large books, henceforward, in the same way ; well* 
printed, well bound, and at a fixed price ; and the 
trade may charge a proper and acknowledged 
profit for their trouble in retailing the book. Then 
the public know what they are about, and so will 
tradesmen ; I, the first producer, answer, to the 
best of my power, for the quality of the book ; — 
paper, binding, eloquence, and all: the retail-dealer 
charges what he ought to charge, openly ; and if 
the public do not choose to give it, they can't get 
the book. That is what I call legitimate business. 
—Fors, I., p. 75. 

Another Reason for Publishing his own 
Books.— I wish entirely to resist the practice of 
writing for money eai-ly in life. I think an author's 
business requires as much training as a musician's, 
and that, as soon as he can write really well, there 
would always, for a man of worth and sense, be 
found capital enough to enable him to be able to 

* Letters to the Woikiueuuncl Laboievs of Greut Britain, 



538 A liCSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

print, say, a hundred pages of his careful work ; 
which, if the public were pleased with, they would 
soon enable him to print more. I do not think 
young men should rush into print, nor old ones 
modify their books to please publishers. — Arrows of 
the Chace, II., p. 146. 

On His Own Books.— I well yet remember my 
father's rushing up to the drawing-room at Heme 
Hill, with wet and flashing eyes, with the proof in 
his hand of the first sentences of his son's writing 
ever set in type, — " Enquiries on the Causes of the 
Color of the Water of the Rhone " (Magazine of 
Natural History, September, 1834 ; followed next 
month by " Facts and Considerations on the Strata 
of Mont Blanc, and on some instances of Twisted 
Strata observable in Switzerland." I was then fif- 
teen). My mother and I eagei'ly questioning the 
cause of his excitement, — " It's — it's — only print,"" 
said he! Alas how much the "only" meant! — 
Deucalion, p. 153. 

In matters of grammar and punctuation, my lit- 
erary sponsor, Mr. W. H. Harrison, was inexorable, 
and many a sentence in Modern Painters, which I 
had thought quite beautifully turned out after a 
forenoon's work on it, had to be turned outside-in, 
after all, and cut into the smallest pieces and sewn 
up again, because he had found out there Avasn't a 
nominative in it, or a genitive, or a conjunction, 
or something else indispensable for a sentence's de- 
cent existence and position in life. Not a book of 
mine for good thirty years, but went, every word 
of it, under his careful eyes twice over— often also 
the last revises left to his tender mercy altogether 
on condition he wouldn't bother me any more " for 
good thirty years ; " that is to say, from my first 
verse-writing in Friendship's Offering at fifteen, to 
my last orthodox and conservative compositions at 
forty-five. But when I began to utter radical sen- 
timents, and say things derogatory to the clergy, 
my old friend got quite restive — absolutely refused 
sometimes to pass even my most grammatical and 



AUTO BIOG RAP IIICAL. 



539 



punctuated paragraphs if their content. saA^red 
of heresy or revolution ; and at last I was obli-ed 
to print all my philanthropy and political economy 
on the sly.-J/*/ First Editor, University 3Iagazine, 
April, 1878. 

People used to call n,e a good writer wh^n I wrote 
my first books ; now they say I can't write at all ; 
because, for instance, if I think anybody's house is 
on fire, I only say, " Sir, your house is on fire ; 
whereas formerly I used to say, " Sir, the abode ui 
which you probably passed the delightful days of 
youth is in a state of inflammation," and every- 
body used to like the effect of the two p's in ' pi-ob- 
ably passed," and of the two d's in - delightful 
days."— -Fors, 1., p- =309. 

I have had what in many respects, I lx)ldly call 
the misfortune, to set my words somtimes prettily 
to-ether ; not without a foolish vanity in the poor 
kiuick that I had of doing so ; until I was heavily 
punished for this pride, by finding that many peo- 
ple thought of the words only, and cared nothing 
for their meaning.-3/z/s«e/-Z/ of Life and its Arts, 
p. 103. 

I have alwavshad three different ways of writing; 
one. with the 'single view of making myself under- 
stood, in which 1 necessarily 6mit a great deal of 
what comes into my head :-another, in which I say 
what I think ought to be said, in what I suppose 
to be the best words I can find for it (which is in 
reality an affected style-be it good or bad) ; and 
mv third way of writing is to say all that comes into 
my head for my own pleasure, in the first words 
that come, retouching them afterwards into (ap- 
proximate) gYa.iinna.r.— Athena, p. 103. 

The only power which I claim for any of my 
books, is that of being right and true as far as they 
reach. None of them pretend to be Kosmoses ;- 
none to be systems of Positivism or Negativism, on 
which the earth is in future to swing instead ot on 
its old worn-out poles ;-none of them to be works 
of genius ;-none of them to be, more than all true 



540 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

work must be, pious ; — and none to be, beyond the 
power of common people's eyes, ears, and noses, 
" sesthetic." They tell you that the world is so big, 
and can't be made bigger — that you yourself ai-e 
also so big, and can't be niade bigger, however you 
puff or bloat yourself ; but that, on modern mental 
nourishment, you may very easily be made smaller. 
They tell you that two and two are four, that gin- 
ger is hot in the mouth, that roses are red, and 
^nuts black. — Proserpina, p. 200. 

A Deistmark Hill in 1871.— I have round me 
here at Denmark Hill seven acres of leasehold 
ground. I pay 50Z. a-year ground rent, and 250^. 
a-year in wages to my gardeners ; besides expenses 
in fuel for hot-houses, and the like. And for this 
sum of three hundred odd pounds a-year I have 
somej^ease and strawberries in summer; some cam- 
ellias and azaleas in winter; and good cream, and a 
quiet place to walk in, all the year round. Of the 
strawberries, cream, and pease, I eat more than is 
good for me ; sometimes, of course, obliging my 
friends with a superfluous pottle or pint. The cam- 
ellias and azaleas stand in the ante-room of my 
library; and everybody says, when they come in, 
"how pi'etty : " and my young lady friends have 
leave to gather what they like to put in their hair, 
when they are going to balls. Meantime, outside 
of my fenced seven acres — owing to the operation 
of the great universal law of supply and demand — 
numbers of people are starving; many more, dying 
of too much gin ; and many of their children 
dying of too little milk : and, as I told you in my 
first Letter, for my own part, I won't stand this 
sort of thing any longer.— i^'ors, I., p. 154. 

Reform-bxperimexts.— On my own little piece 
of mountain ground at Coniston, I grow a large 
quantity of wood-hyacinths and heather, without 
any expense worth mentioning ; but my only in- 
dustrious agricultural operations have been the 
getting three pounds ten worth of hay, off a fiekl 
for which I pay six pounds rent; and the surround- 



AUTOBIOGIIAPHICAL. 541 

inf2:. with a costly wall six feet high, to keep out 
vabbits, a kitchen garden, which, beiug terraced 
and trim, my neighbors say is pretty; and which 
will probably, every third year, when the weatlier 
is not wet, supply me with a dish of strawberries. 

At Carshalton, in Surrey, 1 have indeed had the 
satisfaction of cleaning out one of the springs of 
the Wandel. and making it pleasantly habitable by 
trout; bvit find that the fountain, instead of taking 
care of itself when once pure, as I expected it to do, 
requires continual looking after, like a child getting 
into a mess; and involves me besides in continual 
debate with the surveyors of tlie parish, who insist 
on letting all the roadwashings run into it. For 
the present, however, I persevere, at Carshalton, 
against the wilfulness of the spring and the careless- 
ness of the parish; and hope to conquer both : but 
I have been obliged entirely to abandon a notion I 
had of exhibiting ideally clean street pavement in 
the centre of London — in the pleasant environs of 
Church Lane, St. Giles's. Tliere I had every help 
and encouragement from the authorities ; and 
hoped, with the staff of two men and a young 
rogue of a crossing-sweeper, added to the regular 
force of the i:)arish, to keep a quarter of a mile 
square of the narrow streets v/ithout leaving so 
much as a bit of orange-peel on the footway, or an 
egg-shell in the gutters. I failed, partly because I 
chose too difficult a district to begin with, (the con- 
tributions of transitional mud being constant, and 
the inhabitants passive,) but chiefly because I could 
no more be on the spot mj^self, to give spirit to the 
men, when I left Denmark Hill for Coniston. 

I next set up a tea-shop at 29, Paddington Street, 
W-, (an establishment which my Fors readers may 
as well know of,) to supply the poor in that neigh- 
borhood with pure tea, in packets as small as they 
chose to buy, witliout making a profit on the sub- 
division — larger orders being of course eqvially 
acceptable from anybody who cares to liromote 
honest dealing. The result.of this experiment has 
been my ascertaining that the poor only like to buy 



642 A nUSKIN^ ANTHOLOGY. 

their tea where it is brilliantly lighted and eloquent- 
ly ticketed ; and as I resolutely refuse to compete 
Avith my neighboring tradesmen either in gas or 
rhetoric, the patient subdivision of my parcels by 
the two old servants of my mother's, who manage 
the business for me, hitherto passes little recognized 
as an advantage by my uncalculating public. 
Also, steady increase in the consumption of spirits 
throughout the neighborhood faster and faster 
slackens the demand for tea ; but I believe none 
of these circumstances hjive checked my trade so 
much as my own procrastination in painting my 
sign. Owing to that total want of imagination 
and invention which makes me so impartial and so 
accurate a writer on subjects of political economy, 
I could not for months determine whether the said 
sign should be of a Chinese character, pleasant 
English, rose-color on green ; and still less how far 
legible scale of letters could be compatible, on a 
board only a foot broad, with lengthy enough elu- 
cidation of the peculiar offices of "Mr. Ruskin's 
tea-shop." Meanwhile the business languishes, 
and the rent and taxes absorb the profits, and 
something more, after the salary of my good ser- 
vants has been peiid.—Fors, II., pp. 304-306. 



REMINISCENCES OF CHILDHOOD. 

I had Walter Scott's novels and the Iliad, (Pope's 
translation,) for my only reading when I was a 
child, on week days: on Sundays their effect was 
tempered by Rohinson Crusoe and the Pilgrim's 
Progress ; my mother having it deeply in her heart 
to make an evangelical clergyman of me. Fortu- 
nately, I had an aunt more evangelical than my 
mother ; and my aunt gave me cold mutton for 
Sunday's dinner, which — as I much preferred it 
hot — greatly diminished the influence of the Pil- 
grims Progress, and the end of the matter Avas. 
that I got all the noble imaginative teaching of 



AUTOBlOGMAPIIlrAL. 545 

Defoe and Bunyan, and yet— am not an evangeli- 
cal clergyman. . . . 

Walter Scott and Pope's Homer wei*e reading of 
my own election, but my mother forced me, by 
steady daily toil, to learn long chapters of the 
Bible by heart ; as well as to read it every syllable 
through, aloud, hard names -and all, from Genesis 
to the Apocalypse, about once a year ; and to that 
discipline — patient, accurate, and resolute— I owe, 
not only a knowledge of the book, which I find 
occasionally serviceable, but much of my general 
power of taking jjains, and the best part of my 
taste in literature. . . . 

The aunt who gave me cold mutton on Sundays 
was my father's sister : she lived at Bridge-end, in 
the town of Perth, and had a garden full of goose- 
berry-bushes, sloping down to the Tay, with a door 
opening to the water, which ran past it clear-brown 
over the pebbles three or four feet deep; an infinite 
thing for a child to look down into. 

My father began business as a wine-merchant, 
with no capital, and a considerable amount of debts 
bequeathed him by my grandfather. He accepted 
the bequest, and paid them all before he began to 
lay by anything for himself, for which his best 
friends called him a fool, and I, without expressing 
any opinion as to his wisdom, which I knew in such 
matters to be at least equal to mine, have wj'itten 
on the granite slab over his grave that he was " an 
entirely honest merchant." As days went on he 
was able to take a house in Hunter Street, Bruns- 
wick Square, No. 54 (the Avindows of it, fortunately 
for me, commanded a view of a marvellous iron 
post, out of which the water-carts were filled 
through beautiful little trap-doors, by pipes like 
boa-constrictors ; and I was never weary of con- 
templating that mystery, and the delicious dripping 
consequent) ; and as years went on, and I came to 
be four or five years old, he could command a post- 
chaise and psbiv for two months in the summer, by 
help of which, with my mother and me, he went 
the round of his country customers (who liked to 



SU A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

see tlie priuciijal of the lionse bis own traveller); so 
that, at a jog-trot pace, aud through the panoramic 
opening of the fovir windows of a post-chaise, made 
more panoramic still to me because my seat Avas a 
little bracket in front (for we used to hire the chaise 
regularly for the two months out of Long Acre, and 
so could have it bracketed and pocketed as we 
liked), I saw all the high roads, and most of the 
cross ones, of England and Wales, and great part 
of loAvland Scotland, as far as Perth, where every 
other year we spent the whole summer ; and I used 
to read the Abbot at Kinross and the Monastery in 
Glen Parg, which I confused with " Grlendearg," 
and thought that the White Lady had as certainly 
lived by the streamlet in that glen of the Ochils, as 
the Queen of Scots in the island of Loch Leven. 

It happened also, which Avas the real cause of 
the bias of my after life, that my fathei* had a rare 
love of pictures. I use the word " rare " advisedly, 
having never met with another instance of so in- 
nate a faculty for the discernn)ent of true art, up 
to the point possible without actual practice. Ac- 
cordingly, wherever there was a gallery to be seen, 
we stopped at the nearest town for the night ; and 
in reverentest manner I thus saw nearly all the 
noblemen's houses in England ; not indeed myself 
at that age caring for the pictures, but much for 
castles and ruins, feeling more and more, as T grew 
older, the healthy delightof uncovetous admiration, 
and perceiving, as soon as I could perceive any 
political truth at all, that it was probably much 
happier to live in a small house, and have Warwick 
Castle to be astonished at, than to live in Warwick 
Castle, and have nothing to be astonished at ; 
but that, at all events, it would not make Bruns- 
wick Square in the least more pleasantly habitable, 
to pull Warwick Castle down. And, at this day, 
though I have kind invitations enough to visit 
Amei'ica, I could not, even for a couple of months, 
live in a country so miserable as to possess no cas- 
tles.— i^07-«, L, pp. 129-133. 

Fuller Accouivt of the Rollo-Tours.— The 



A UTOBIOGliA rillCAL. oio 

old English chariot is the most luxurious of travel- 
ling carriages, for two persons, or even for two per- 
sons and so much of third personage as I possessed 
at three years old. The one in question was hung 
high, so that we could see well over stone dykes and 
average hedges out of it; such elevation being at- 
tained by the old-fashioned folding-steps, with a 
lovely padded cushion fitting into the recess of the 
door -steps which it was one of my chief travelling 
delights to see the hostlers fold up and down ; 
though my delight w^as painfully alloyed by envious 
ambition to be allowed to do it myself : — but I 
never was — lest I should pinch my fingers. 

The " dickey "—(to think that I should never till 
this moment have asked myself the derivation of 
that word, and now be unable to get at it !)— being, 
typically, that commanding seat in her Majesty's 
mail, occupied by the Guard ; and classical, even 
in modern literature, as the scene of Mr. Bob Saw- 
yer's arrangements with Sam— was thrown far back 
in Mr. Telford's chariot, so as to give perfectly 
comfortable room for the legs (if one chose to travel 
outside on line days), and to afford beneath it spa- 
cious area to the boot, a storehouse of rearward 
miscellaneous luggage. Over which — with all the 
rest of forward and superficial luggage— my nurse 
Anne presided, both as guard and packer ; unri- 
valled, she, in the flatness and precision of her in- 
laying of dresses, as in turning of pancakes ; the 
fine precision, observe, meaning also the easy wit 
and invention of her art; for, no more in packing 
a trunk than commanding a campaign, is precision 
possible without foresight. 

Posting, in those days, being universal, so that at 
the leading inns in every country town, the cry 
"Horses out!" down the yard, as one drove up, 
Avas answered, often instantly, always within five 
minutes, by the merry trot through the archway of 
the booted and bright-jacketed rider, w'ith his ca- 
parisoned pair — there w^as no driver's seat in front : 
and the four large, admirably fitting and sliding 
windows, admitting no drop of rain when they 



546 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY, 

were \x\>, and never sticking as they were let down, 
formed one large moving oriel, out of which one 
saw the country round, to the full half of the hori- 
zon. My own prospect was more extended still, for 
my seat was the little box containing my clothes, 
strongly made, with a cushion on one end of it; set 
upright in front (and well forward), between my 
father and mother. I was thus not the least in their 
way, and my horizon of sight the widest possible. 
When no object of particular interest presented 
itself, I trotted, keeping time with the postboy — on 
my trunk cushion for a saddle, and whipped my 
father's legs for horses ; at first theoretically only, 
with dextrous motion of wrist ; but ultimately in a 
quite practical and efHcient manner, my father 
having presented me with a silver-mounted postil- 
ion's whip. 

The Midsummer holiday, for better enjoyment of 
which Mr. Telford provided us with these luxuries, 
began usually on the fifteenth of May, or there- 
abouts ; — my father's birthday was on the tenth ; 
on that day I was always allowed to gather the 
gooseberries for his first gooseberry pie of the year, 
from the tree between the buttresses on the north 
wall of the Ilerne Hill garden ; so that we could not 
leave before that festa. The holiday itself consisted 
in a tour for ordei-s through half the English coun- 
ties ; and a visit (if the counties lay northward) to 
my aunt in Scotland. 

The mode of journeying was as fixed as that of 
our home life. We went from forty to fifty miles a 
day, starting always early enough in the morning 
to arrive comfortably to four o'clock dinner. Gen- 
erally, therefore, getting off at six o'clock, a 
stage or two were done before breakfast, with the 
dew on the grass, and first scent from the haw^- 
thorns : if in the course of the mid-day drive there 
were any gentleman's house to be seen — or, better 
still, a lord's, or, best of all, a duke's — my father 
baited the horses, and took my mother and me rev- 
erently through the state rooms ; always sjieaking 
a little under our breath to the housekeeper, major- 



AUTOniOGBAFHICAL. 547 

domo, or other authority in charge ; and gleaning 
worshipfully what fragmentary iUustrations of the 
history and domestic ways of the family might fall 
from their lips. My father had a qviite infallible 
natural judgment in painting ; and though it had 
never been cultivated so as to enable him to under- 
stand the Italian schools, his sense of the power of 
the nobler masters in northern work was as true 
and passionate as the most accomplished artist's. 
He never, when I was old enough to care for what 
he himself delighted in, allowed me to look for an 
instant at a bad picture ; and if there were a Rey- 
nolds, Velasquez, Vandyck, or Rembrandt in the 
rooms, he would pay the surliest housekeepers into 
patience until he had seen it to heart's content ; if 
none of these, I was allowed to look at Guido, Carlo 
Dolce, or the more skilful masters of the Dutch 
school— Cuyp, Teniers, liobbima. Wouvermans ; 
but never any second-rate or doubtful examples. 

I wonder how many of the lower middle class are 
now capable of going through a nobleman's house, 
with judgment of this kind; and yet with entirely 
unenvious and reverent delight in the splendor of 
the abode of the supreme and beneficent being 
who allo^vs them thus to enter his paradise. 

If there were no nobleman's house to be seen, 
there was certainly, in the course of the day's jour- 
ney, some ruined castle or abbey ; some celebrated 
village church, or stately cathedral. We had always 
unstinted time for these ; and if I was at disad- 
vantage because neither my father nor mother 
could tell me enough history to make the buildings 
authoritatively interesting, I had at least leisure 
and liberty to animate them with romance in my 
own fashion. —-Fors, III., pp. T-IO. 

Tours ox the Coxtixent.— Very early in Conti- 
nental transits we had found out that the family 
travelling carriage, taking much time and ingenuity 
to load, needing at the least three— usually four- 
horses, and on Alpine passes six, not only jolted 
and lagged painfully on bad roads, but was liable 



5^8 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

in every way to more awkward discomfitures tlian 
ligliter vehicles ; getting itself jammed in archways, 
wrenclied with damage out of ruts, and involved 
in volleys of justifiable reprobation among market 
stalls. So when we knew better, my father and 
mother always had their own old-fashioned light 
two-horse carriage to themselves, and I had one 
made with any quantity of front and side pockets 
for books and picked-up stones ; and hung very 
low, with a fixed side-step, which I could get off or 
on with the horses at the trot ; and at any rise or 
fall of the road, relieve them, and get my own 
walk, without troubling the driver to think of me. 
— Proserpina, p. 223. 

Early Nurture.— In mj^'childhood, for best and 
truest beginning of all blessings, I had been taught 
the perfect meaning of Peace, in thought, act, and 
word. I never had heard my father's or mother's 
voice once raised in any question with each other ; 
nor seen an angry, or even slightly hurt or offended 
glance, in the eyes of either. I had never heard a 
servant scolded, nor even suddenly, passionately. 
or in any severe manner blamed. 1 had never seen 
a moment's trouble or disorder in any household 
matter ; nor anything whatever either done in a 
hurry, or undone in due time. . . . 

Next to this quite priceless gift of Peace, I had 
received the perfect understanding of the natures 
of Obedience and Faith. I obeyed word, or lifted 
finger, of father or mother, simply as a ship her 
helm ; not only without idea of resistance, but 
receiving the direction as a part of my own life 
and force, a helpful law, as necessary to me in 
every moral action as the law of gravity in leap- 
ing. . . . 

My parents were— in a sort— visible powers of 
nature to me, no more loved than the sun and the 
moon : only I should have been annoyed and puz- 
zled if either of them had gone out ; (how much, 
now, when both are darkened !)— still less did I love 
God ; not that I had any quarrel with Him, or fear 



AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL. 549 

of Iliin ; but simply found what people told me 
was His service, disagreeable; and what people 
told me was His book, not entertaining.— i^o/'s, II-, 
pp. 430, 427. 

Religious Trainijn^g.— WhenI was a child, I lost 
the pleasure of some three-sevenths of my life be- 
cause of Sunday ; for I always had a way of look- 
ing forward to things, and a lurid shade was cast 
over the whole of Friday and Saturday by the hor- 
rible sense that Sunday was coming, and inevitable. 
Not that I was rebellious against my good mother 
or aunts in any wise ; feeling only that we were all 
crushed under a relentless faith.— i^or^, I,, p- 326. 

My mother took me very early to church ;— where, 
in spite of my quiet habits, and my mother's golden 
vinaigrette, alwavs indulged to me there, and there 
only, with its lid unclasped that I might see the 
wreathed, open pattern above the sponge, I found 
the bottom of the pew so extremely dull a place to 
keep quiet in, (my best story-books being also taken 
away from me in the morning.) that— as I have 
somewhere said before— the horror of Sunday used 
even to cast its prescient gloom as far back in the 
week as Friday— and all the glory of Monday, with 
i-hurch seven days removed again, was no equiv- 
alent for it. 

Nothwithstanding, I arrived at some abstract in 
my own mind of the Rev. Mr. Howell's sermons ; 
and occasionally— in imitation of hiin, preached a 
sermon at home over the red sofa cushions ;— this 
performance being always called for by my mother's 
dearest friends, as the great accomplishment of my 
childhood. The sermon was— I believe— some eleven 
words long ;— very exemplary, it seems to me, in 
that respect-and I still think must have been the 
purest gospel, for I know it began with " People, 
be good."— -Fors, II., p. 378. 

Bible Studies.— As soon as I was able to read 
with fluency, my mother be-an a course of Bible 
work with me, which never ceased till I went to 
Oxford. She read alternate verses with me, watch- 



550 A BUSKIN' ANTHOLOGY. 

ing, at first, every intonation of my voice, and cor- 
recting the false ones, till she made me tindei'stand 
the verse, if within my reach, rightly, and energet- 
ically. It might be beyond me altogether ; that 
she did not cai-e about; but she made sure that as 
soon as I got hold of it at all, I should get hold of it 
by the right end. 

In this way she began with the first verse of Gene- 
sis, and went straight through to the last verse of the 
Apocalypse; hard names, numbers, Levitical law, 
and all ; and began again at Genesis the next day ; 
if a name was hard, the better the exercise in pro- 
nunciation — if a chapter was tiresome, the better 
lesson in patience — if loathsome, the better lesson 
in faith that there was some use in its being so 
outspoken. After our chapters (from two to three 
a day, according to their length, the first thing 
after breakfast, and no interruption from servants 
alloAved — none from visitors, who either' joined in 
the reading or had to stay upstairs — and none from 
any visitings or excursions, except real travelling), 
I had to learn a few verses by heart, or repeat, to 
make sure I had not lost, something of what was 
already known ; and, with the chapters below 
enumerated, I had to learn the whole body of 
the fine old Scottish paraphrases, which are good, 
melodious, and forceful verse; and to which, to- 
gether with the Bible itself, I owe the first cultiva- 
tion of my ear in sound. — Fo7's, II., p. 39G. 

I opened my oldest Bible just now, to look for the 
accurate words of David about the killed lamb ; — 
a small, closely, and vei-y neatly printed volume it 
is, printed in Edinburgh by Sir D. Hunter Blair 
and J. Bruce, Printers to the King's Most Excellent 
Majesty, in 1816. Yellow, now, with age, and flexi- 
ble, but not unclean Avith much use, except that the 
lower corners of the pages at 8th of 1st Kings, and 
32d Deuteronomy are worn somewhat thin and dark, 
the learning of those two chapters having cost me 
much pains. My mother's list of the chapters with 
Avhicli, learned every syllable accurately, she estab- 
lished my soul in life, has just fallen out of it : 



AUTOBIOGBAPHICAL. 551 

Exodus, chapters 15th and 20th.— 2 Samuel, chap- 
ter 1st, from 17th verse to theeud.— 1 Kings, chapter 
8th.— Psalms, 23rd, 32nd, 90th, 91st, 103rd, 112th, 
119th, 139th.— Proverbs, chapters 2nd, 3rd, 8th, 12th, 
—Isaiah, chapter 58th.— Matthew, chapters 5th, 6th, 
7th.— Acts, chapter 26th.— 1 Corinthians, chapters 
13th, 15th.— James, chapter 4th.— Revelation, chap- 
ters 5 th, 6th. 

And truly, though I have ijicked up the elements 
of a little further knowledge— in mathematics, 
meteorology, and the like, in after life— and owe 
not a little to the teaching of many people, this ma- 
ternal installation of my mind in tliat property of 
chapters, I count very confidently the most pre- 
cious, and, on the whole, the one essential part of 
all my education.— -For.y, II., p. 213. 

It is only by deliberate effort that I recall the 
long morning hours of toil, as regular as sunrise- 
toil on both sides equal— by which, year after year, 
my mother forced me to learn all the Scotch para- 
phrases by heart, and ever so many chapters of the 
Bible besides, (the eighth of 1st Kings being one- 
try it, good reader, in a leisure hour !) allowing not 
so much as a syllable to be missed or misplaced ; 
while every sentence was required to be said ovei 
and over again till she was satisfied with the accent 
of it. I recollect a struggle between us of about 
three weeks, concerning the accent of the " of" in 
the lines 

" ShaU any following spring revive 
The ashes of the urn ? " 

I insisting, partly in childish obstinacy, and partly 
in true instinct for rhythm (being wholly carelesd 
on the subject both of urns and their contents), on 
reciting it, " The ashes of the urn." It was not, I 
say, till after three weeks' labor, that n)y mother 
got the accent laid upon the ashes, to her mind. 
But had it taken three years, she would have done 
it, having once undertaken to do it. And, assur- 
edly, had she not done it, I had been simply an ava- 
ricious picture collector, or perhaps even a more 



552 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

avaricious money collector, to this day; and had 
she done it wrongly, no after-study would ev«r 
have enabled me to read so much as a single line 
of verse. — Fors, II., p. 70. 

A Reminiscence. — [Looking one day at a copy of 
Front's Hotel de Ville, Brussels, done by him, when 
a young man, at Heme Hill, Ruskin exclaimed] 
" Had I been permitted at this time to put my whole 
strength into drawing and geology, my life, so far 
as I can judge, would have been an entirely 
harmonious and serviceable one. Bvit I was too 
foolish and sapless myself to persist in the healthy 
bent ; and my friends mistook me for a ' genius,' 
and were minded to make me a poet, or a bishoj), 
or a member of Parliment. Had I done heartily and 
honestly what they wished, it had also been well. 
But I sulked and idled, between their way and my 
own, and went all to pieces, just in the years when I 
ought to have been nailing myself well together." — 
Notes 071 my Own Draioinys, etc., p. 113. 

Love op the Sea. — Whenever I could get to a 
beach it was enough for me to have the waves 
to look at and hear and pursue and fly from. I 
never took to natural history of shells, or shrimps, 
or weeds, or jelly-fish. Pebbles ? — yes if there were 
any ; otherwise, merelj^ stared all day long at 
the tumbling and creaming strength of the sea. 
Idiotically, it now apjjears to me, wasting all that 
priceless youth in mere dream and trance of ad- 
miration. It had a certain strain of Byronesque 
passion in it, which meant something : but it was 
a fearful loss of i\va.e.—Fr(jeterita, p. 134. 



AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL. 553 

LEAVES FROM RUSKIN'S PRIVATE 

ACCOUNTS* 

£ s.d 

Balance in Bank, 20tli Jan. 1876 537 17 9 

Received: Mr. Allen, on Pub'g Account 50 

Mr. Ellis, on ditto ... 700 
Lecture, London Institution 10 10 

595 7 9 

Jan. 2^. Royal Insurance Co. (a). . . 37 10 

27. F.Crawley (6) 35 

31. Taxes on Amorial Bear- 
ings, etc 7 19 

Feb. 4. Warren and Jones — Tea for 

Shop 36 10 

6. Buying a lad off who had 

enlisted and repented 30 

7. Christmas Gifts in Oxford 14 10 

7. Klein (c) 5 00 

7. Pocket Money 10 10 

7. Crawley 5 00 

8. Miss Rudkin, Clifford 

Street id) 14 14 

11. Dr. Parsons if) 21 

11, The Bursar of Corpusf/).. 37 7 3 

13. Professor Westwood ( ^ ). . 50 

14. Mr. Sly(;i), Coniston, Wat- 

erheadlnn 33 

19. Downs {i) 35 

20. Subscriptions to Societies, 

learned and other (fc). . 37 11 

360 3 



Balance Feb. 20 £235 5 9 

(a) Insurance on £15,000 worth of drawings and 
books in my rooms at Oxford. 
(&) Paticulars of this account to be afterwards 

* [Published by him, from time to time, in Fors Clavigera, 
as part of his official reports as Master of St. George's Guild. 
The one given above is accompanied by this foot-note] : — 

My friends (see a really kind article in the Monetary Gazette) 
much doubt, and very naturally, the wisdom of this exposition. 
I indeed expected to appear to some better advantage; but that 
the confession is not wholly pleasant, and appears imprudent, 
only makes it the better example. Fors [Fate] would have it 



554 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

given ; iny Oxford assistant having just lost his 
wife, and been subject to unusual expenses. 

(c) My present valet, a delightful old German, on 
temporary service. 

{d) Present, on my birthday, of a silk frock to 
one of my pets. It became her very nicely ; but I 
think there Avas a little too much silk in the 
flounces. 

(e) My good doctor at Coniston. Had to drive 
over from Hawkshead every other winter day, 
because I wouldn't stop drinking too much tea — 
also my servants were ill. 

(/) About four times this sum will keep me com- 
fortably — all the year round — here among my 
Oxford friends — when I have reduced myself to the 
utmost allowable limit of a St. George's Master's 
income — 306 jjounds a year (the odd pound for luck). 
ig) For copies of the Book of Kells, bought of a 
poor artist. Very beautiful, and good for gifts to 
St. George. 

(h) My honest host (happily falsifying his name), 
for friends when I haven't houseroom, etc. This 
bill chiefly for hire of carriages. 

(i) Downs shall give account of himself in next 
Fors. 
{k) £ s. 

Athenaeum 7 7 

Alpine Clu b 1 1 

Early English Text Society 10 10 

Horticultural 4 4 

Geological 2 2 

Architectual 1 1 

Historical 1 1 

Anthropological 2 2 

Consumption Hosjjital 3 3 

Lifeboat 5 

£37 11 

—Fors, III., pp. 166, 167. 

My father left all his fortune to my mother and 
me : to my mother, thirty-seven thousand pounds* 
and the house at Denmark Hill for life ; to me, a 

* 15,00 Bank Stock. " 



AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL. 555 

hundred and twentj" thousand,* his leases at 
Heme and Denmark Hills, his freehold jjottery at 
Greenwich, and his pictures, then estimated by 
him as worth ten thousand pounds, but now worth 
at least three times that sum. 

My mother made two wills ; one immediately 
after my father's death ; the other— (in {gentle 
forgetfulness of all worldly things past) — immedi- 
ately before her own. Both are in the same terms, 
'' I leave all I have to my son." This sentence, 
exi:)anded somewhat by legal artifice, remains yet 
pathetically clear, as the bi'ief substance of both 
documents. I have therefore to-day, in total 
account of my stewardship, to declare what I have 
done with a hundred and fifty seven thousand 
pounds ; and certain houses and lands besides. In 
giving which account I shall say nothing of the 
share that other people have had in counselling or 
mis-counselling me ; nor of my reasons for what I 
have done. St. George's bishops do not ask people 
who advised them, or what they intended to do ; 
but only what they did. 

My first performance was the investment of fifty 
thousand pounds in ''entirely safe" mortgages, 
which gave me five per cent, instead of three. I 
very soon, howev^er, perceived it to be no less desir- 
able, than difficult, to get quit of these "entirely 
safe " mortgages. The last of them that was worth 
anything came conveniently in last year (see Fors 
accounts). I lost about twenty thousand pounds 
on them, altogether. 

In the second place, I thought it rather hard on 
my father's relations that he should have left all 
his money to me only; and as I was very fond of 
some of them, indulged myself, and relieved my 
conscience at the same time, by giving seventeen 
thousand pounds to those I liked best. Money 
Avhicli has turned out to be quite rightly invested, 
and at a high interest ; and has been fruitful to me 
of many good things, and much haj^piness. 

* I count Consols as thousands, forty thousand of this were in 
stocks. 



556 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

Next I parted with some of my pictures, too large 
for the house I proposed to live in, and bought 
others at treble the price, the dealers always assur- 
ing me that the public would not look at any pic- 
ture which I had seen reason to part with ; and 
that I had onlj' my own eloquence to thank for the 
prices of those I wished to buy.* 

I bought next a collection of minerals (the 
foundation now of what are jn-eparing Sheffield 
and other schools) for a stipulated sum of three 
thousand pounds, on the owner's statement of its 
value. It proved not to be worth five hundred. I 
went to law about it. The lawyers charged me a 
thousand pounds for their own services ; gave me 
a thousand pounds back out of the three ; and 
made the defendant give me another five hundred 
pounds' worth of minerals. On the whole, a satis- 
factory legal performance; but it took two years in 
the doing, and caused me much worry; the lawyers 
spending most of the time they charged me for, in 
cross-examining me, and other witnesses, as to 
whether the agreement was made in the front or 
the back shop, with other particulars, interesting 
in a picturesque point of view, but wholly irrele- 
vant to the business. 

Then Brantwood was offered me, whidi I bought, 
without seeing it, for fifteen hundred pounds ; (the 
fact being that 1 have no time to see things, and 
must decide at a guess ; or not act at all). 

Then the house at Brantwood, a mere shed of 
rotten timber and loose stone, had to be furnished, 
and repaired. For old acquaintance sake, I went 
to my father's upholsterer in London, (instead of 
the country Coniston one, as I ought,) and had five 
pounds charged me for a footstool, the repairs also 
l,)roving worse than complete rebuilding ; and the 

* Fortune also went always against me. I gave carte-Nanche 
at Christie's for Turner's drawing of Terni (five Indies by 
seven), and it cost me Ave hundred pounds. I put a limit of 
two hundred on the Roman Forum, and it was bouglit over 
me for a hundred and fifty, and I gnash my teeth whenever I 
think of it, because a commission had been given up to three 
hundred. 



AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL. 557 

moving one's chattels from London, no small mat- 
ter. I got myself at last settled at my tea-table, 
one summer evening, with my view of the lake— for 
a net four thousand pounds all told. I afterwards 
built a lodge nearly as big as the house, for a mar- 
ried servant, and cut and terraced a kitchen gar- 
den out of the '• steep wood " ''' — another two thou- 
sand transforming themselves thus into " utilities 
embodied in material objects"; but these latter 
operations, under my own immediate direction, 
turning out approvable by neighbors, and, I 
imagine, not unprofitable as investment. 

All these various shiftings of harness, and getting 
into saddle, — with the furnishing also of my rooms 
at Oxford, and the pictures and universal acquisi- 
tions aforesaid — may be very moderately put at 
fifteen thousand for a total. I then proceeded to 
assist my young relation in business ; with result- 
ant loss as before related of fifteen thousand ; of 
which indeed he still holds himself responsible for 
ten, if ever able to pay it ; but one of the jjieces of 
the private message sent me, with St. Ursiila's on 
Christmas Day, was that I should forgive this debt 
altogether. Which hereby my cousin will please 
observe, is very heartily done ; and he is to be my 
cousin as he used to be, without any more thought 
of it. 

Then, for my St. George and Oxford gifts— there 
are good fourteen thousand gone — nearer fifteen 
— even after allowing for stock prices, but say 
fourteen. 

And finally, you see what an average year of 
carefully restricted expense .has been to me !— Say 
'£o,500 for thirteen years, or, roughly, seventy 
thousand; and we have this — I hope not beyond 
me — sum in addition : — 

Loss on mortgages £20,000 

Gift to relations 17,000 

Loss to relations 15,000 

Harness and stable expenses 15,000 

St. George and Oxford 14,000 

And added yearly spending 70,000 

£151,000 

* " Brant " Westmoreland for steep. 



558 A IIU8K1X ANTHOLOGY. 

Those are the clearly stateable and memorable 
heads of expenditure— more I could give, if it were 
needful ; still, when one is living on one's capital, 
the melting away is always faster than one expects; 
and the final state of affairs is, that on this 1st of 
April, 1877, my goods and chattels are simply these 
following :— 

In funded cash — six thousand Bank Stock, Avorth, 
at x^resent prices, something more than fifteen 
thousand i)Ounds. 

Brantwood — worth, certainly with its house, and 
furnitures, five thousand. 

Marylebone freehold and leaseholds— three thou- 
sand five hundred. 

Greenwich freehold — twelve hundred. 

llerne Hill leases and other little holdings— thii'- 
teen hundred. 

And pictures and books, at present lowest auction 
prices, worth at least double my Oxford insurance 
estimate of thirty thousand ; but put them at no 
more, and you will find that, gathering the wrecks 
of me together, I could still now retire to a mossy 
hermitage, on a little property of fifty-four thou- 
sand odd pounds ; more than enough to find me 
in meal and cresses. So that I have not at all yet 
reached my limit proposed in Munera Pulveris—oi 
dying "as poor as possible," nor consider myself 
ready for the digging scenes in Timon of Athens. 
Accordingly, I intend next year, Avhen St. George's 
work really begins, to redress my affairs in the fol- 
lowing manner : — 

First. I shall make over the Marylebone prop- 
erty entirely to the St. George's Company, under 
Miss liiirs superintendence always. I have already 
had the value of it back in interest, and have no 
business now to keep it any more. 

Secondly. The Greenwich property was my 
father's, and I am sure he would like me to keep it. 
I shall keep it therefore; and in some way, make it 
a Garden of Tuileries, honorable to my father, and 
to the London he lived in. 

Thirdly. Brantwood I shall keep, to live u^ion. 



AUrOBIOGRAnnCAL. 559 

with its present servants — necessary, all, to keep it 
in good order; and to keep me comfoi'table, and fit 
for my work. I may not be able to keep quite so 
open a house there as I liave been accustomed to 
do : that remains to be seen. 

Fourthly. My Heme Hill leases and little pro- 
perties that bother me, I shall make over to my pet 
cousin — whose children, and their donkey, need 
good supplies of bread and butter, and hay : she 
always promising to keep my old nursery for a 
lodging to me, when I come to town. 

Fifthly. Of my ready cash, I mean to spend to 
the close of this year, another three thousand 
pounds, in amusing myself — with such amusement 
as is yet possible to me — at Venice, and on the 
Alps, or elsewhere; and as, at the true beginning 
of St. George's work, I must quit myself of usury 
and the Bank of England, I shall (at some loss you 
will find, on estimate) then buy for myself twelve 
thousand of Consols stock, which, if the nation 
hold its word, will provide me with three hundred 
and sixty pounds a-year — the proper degrees of the 
annual circle, according to my estimate, of a bach- 
elor gentleman's proper income, on which, if he 
cannot live, he deserves speedily to die. And this, 
with Brantwood strawberries and cream, I will for 
my own poor part, undertake to live upon, uncom- 
plainingly, as Master of St. Greorge's Company — or 
die. But, for my dependants, and customary char- 
ities, further provision must be made ; or such 
dependencies and charities must end. Virtually, I 
should then be giving away the lives of these peo- 
ple to St. George, and not my own. 

Wherefore, 

Sixthly. Though I have not made a single farthing 
by my literary work last year,* I have paid Messrs. 
Hazell, Watson, and Viney an approximate sum of 
£800 for printing my new books, which sum has been 
provided by the sale of the already printed ones. I 
have only therefore now to stop working; and I shall 

* Counting from last April fool's day to this. 



560 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY", 

receive regular pay for my past work — a gradually 
increasing, and I have confidence enough in St. 
George and myself to say an assuredly still increas- 
ing, income, on which I have no doubt I can suflB- 
ciently maintain all my present servants and pen- 
sioners ; and perhaps even also sometimes indulge 
myself with a new missal. New Turner drawings 
are indeed out of the question ; but, as I have al- 
ready thirty large and fifty or more ?mall ones, and 
some score of illuminated MSS., I may get through 
the declining years of my aesthetic life, it seems to me, 
on those terms, resignedly, and even spare a book or 
two— or even a Turner or two, if needed— to my St. 
George's schools. 

Now, to stop working for the press, will be very 
pleasant to me — not to say medicinal, or even 
necessary — very soon. But that does not mean 
stopping work. Deucalion and Proserpina can go 
on far better without printing; and if the public 
wish for them, they can subscribe for them. In 
any case, I shall go on at leisure, God willing, with 
the works I have undertaken. 

Lastly. My Oxford professorship will provide 
for my expenses at Oxford as long as I am needed 
there. 

Such, Companions mine, is your Master's posi- 
tion in life; — and such his plan for the few years of 
it which may yet remain to him. You will not, I 
believe, be disposed wholly to deride either what I 
have done, or mean to do ; but of this you may be 
assured, that my spending, whether foolish or wise, 
has not been the Avanton lavishness of a man who 
could not restrain his desires; but the deliberate 
distribution, as 1 thought best, of the wealth I had 
received as a trust, while I yet lived, and had power 
over it. For what has been consumed by swind- 
lers, your modern principles of trade are answer- 
able ; for the rest, none even of that confessed to 
have been given in the partiality of affection, has 
been bestowed but in real self-denial. My own 
complete satisfaction would have been in buying 
every Turner drawing I could afford, and passing 



ODDS AND ENDS. 561 

quiet days at Brantwood between my garden and 
my gallery, praised, as 1 should have been, by all 
the \vt)rld, for doing good to myself. 

1 do not doubt, had God condemned me to that 
selfishness, He would also have inflicted on me the 
curse of liappiness in it. But He has lead me by 
other ways, of which my friends who are wise 
and kind, neither as j^et praising me, nor condemn- 
ing, may one day be gladdened in witness of a 
nobler issue. — Fors, IV., pp. 17-32. 



CHAPTER IV. 

Odds and Ends. 

The Chef-d'ceuvre of Man. —The greatest thing 
a liuman soul ever does in this world is to see 
something, and tell what it saw in a plain way. 
Hundreds of people can talli for one who can think, 
but thousands can think for one who can see. To 
see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion, — all in 
one. — Modern Painters, III., p. 386. 

The Diffusion of Taste. — As I Avas walking up 
Fleet Street the other day, my eye caught the title 
of a book standing open in a bookseller's window. 
It was — ''On tlie necessity of tlie diffusion of taste 
among all classes." "Ah," I thought to mj'self, "my 
classifying fi-iend, when you have diffused your 
taste, wliere will your classes be? "' — Croiau of Wild 
Olive, Lect. II., p. 47. 

Drowned in Wonder.— The true miracle, to my 
mind, would not be in the sun's standing still, but 
IS in its going on ! We are all of us being swept 
down to death in a sea of miracle; we are drowned 
in wonder, as gnats in a Rhine wdiirlpool. — Fors, 
III., p. 313. 

Extreme Fatigue. — Fatigue yourself, but once, 
to utter exhaustion, and to the end of life you shall 
not recover the former vigor of your frame. Let 
heart-sickness pass beyond a certain bitter point, 



562 A BUSKIlsr ANTHOLOGY, 

and the heart loses its life forever. — Sesame and 
Lilies, Preface, 1871, p. 13. 

The Decisive Instant.— There is a decisive in- 
stant in all matters ; and if you look languidly, 
you are sure to miss it. Nature seems always, some- 
how, trying to make you miss it. " I will see that 
through," you must say, "without turning my 
head" ; or you won't see the trick of it at all. — 
Mornings in Florence, p. 37. 

Music and Song.— Music is the nearest at hand, 
the most orderly, the most delicate, and the most 
perfect, of all bodily pleasures ; it is also the only 
one which is equally heljjful to all the ages of man 
— helpful from the nurse's song to her infant, to the 
music, unheard of others, which often, if not most 
frequently, haunts the death-bed of pure and inno- 
cent sj^irits. — Time and Tide, p. 46. 

All right human song is the finished expression, 
by art, of the joy or grief of noble persons, for right 
causes. And accxirately in proportion to the Tight- 
ness of the cause, and purity of the emotion, is the 
possibility of the fine art. A maiden may sing of 
her lost love, but a miser cannot sing of his lost 
money. — LecUires on Art, p. 47. 

The only really beautiful piece of song which I 
heard at Verona, during several month's stay there 
in 1869, Avas the low chant of girls unwinding the 
cocoons of the silkworm, in the cottages among the 
olive-clad hills on the north of the city. Never any 
in the streets of it ; — there, only insane shrieks of 
Reijublican populace, or senseless dance-music, 
played by operatic-military bands. — Fors, II., p. 50. 

Solomon. — Some centuries before the Christian 
era, a Jew merchant largely engaged in business on 
the Gold Coast, and reported to have made one of 
the largest fortunes of his time (held also in repute for 
much practical sagacity), left -among his ledgers 
some general maxims concerning wealth, which have 
been preserved, strangely enough, even to our own 
days, They were held in considerable resjject by 



ODDS AND ENDS. 563 

the most active traders of the middle ages, espe- 
cially by the Venetians, who even went so far in 
their admiration as to place a statue of the old 
Jew on the angle of one of their principal j)ublic 
buildings. Of late years these Avritings have fallen 
into disrepute, being ojjposed in every particular 
to the spirit of modern commerce.— ?7«to 2'his Last, 
p. 43. 

The Fatigued Imagination.— Whenever the 
imagination is tired, it is necessary to find for it 
something, not more admirable but less admirable ; 
such as in that weak state it can deal with ; then 
give it peace, and it will recover. 

I well recollect the walk on which I first found 
out this; it was on the winding road fronj Sallenche, 
sloping up the hills toward St. Gervais, one cloud- 
less Sunday afternoon. The road circles softly be- 
tween bits of rocky bank and mounded iDasture ; 
little cottages and chapels gleaming out from, 
among the trees at every turn. Behind me, some 
leagues in length, rose the jagged range of the 
mountains of the Reposoir ; on the other side of 
the valley, the mass of the Aiguille de Varens, 
heaving its seven thousand feet of cliff into the air 
at a single effort, its gentle gift of waterfall, the 
Nant d'Arpenaz, like a pillar of cloud at its feet ; 
Mount Blanc and all its aiguilles, one silver flame, 
in front of me ; marvellous blocks of mossy granite 
and dark glades of pine around me ; but I could 
enjoy nothing, and could not for a long while 
make out what was the matter with me, until at 
last I discovered that if I confined myself to one 
thing — and that a little thing — a tuft of moss, or a 
single crag at the top of the Varens, or a wreath or 
two of foam at the bottom of the Nant d'ArjDenaz, 
I began to enjoy it directly, because then I had 
mind enough to put into the thing, and the enjoy- 
ment arose from the quantitj^ of the imaginative 
energy I could bring to bear upon it. — Modern 
Painters, III., p. 157. 

_ An " Olds" Paper.— If any journal would limit 



5Gi A nUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

itself to statements of well-sifted facts, making itself 
not a " news" paper, but an " olds " i^aper, and 
giving its statements tested and true, like old wine, 
as soon as tilings could be known accurately; choos- 
ing also, of tlie many things that might be known, 
those which it was most vital to know, and sum- 
ming them in few words of pure English, — I cannot 
say whether it would ever pay well to sell it; but I 
am sure it would pay well to read it, and to read 
no other. — Fors, I., p. 29. 

Rebuilding op Warwick Castle.— I am at this 
hour endeavoring to find work and food for a boy 
of seventeen, one of eight people — two married 
couples, a woman and her daughter, and this boy 
and his sister— who all sleep together in one room, 
some 18 ft. square, in the heart of London ; and 
you call upon me for a subscription to help to 
rebuild Warwick Castle. 

Sir, I am an old and thoroughbred Tory, and as 
such I say, " If a noble family cannot rebuild their 
own castle, in God's name let them live in the 
nearest ditch till they can.". . . 

The sum of what I have to say in this present 
matter may be put in few words. 

As an antiquary — which, thank Heaven, I am — 
I say, " Part of Warwick Castle is burnt— 'tis pity. 
Take better care of the rest." 

As an old Tory — which, thank HeaA^en, I am — 1 
say, "Lord Warwick's house is burned. Let Lord 
Warwick build abetterif hecan^a worseif he must; 
but in any case, let him neither beg nor borrow." 

As a modern renovator and Liberal — which, 
thankHeaven, lam not — I would say, " Byallmeans 
let the public subscribe to build a spick-and-span 
new Warwick Castle, and let the pictures be 
touched up, and exhibited by gas light ; let the 
family live in the back rooms, and let there be a 
table cVhute in the great hall at two and six every 
day, 2s. 6cZ. a head, and let us have Guy's bowl for 
a dinner he\\.''—Arrotos of the Chace, I., pp. 148-150. 

Gardens and Libraries. — The human race may 



ODDS AND ENDS. 5G5" 

be projoerly divided by zoologists into " men who 
have gardens, libraries, or works of art ; and who 
have none ; " and tlie former class will include all 
noble persons, except only a few who make the 
world their garden or museum ; while the 
people who have not, or, Avhich is the same thing, 
do not care for gardens or libraries, but care for 
nothing but money or luxuries, will include none 
but ignoble persons : only it is necessary to un- 
derstand that I mean by the term " garden " as 
much the Carthusian's plot of ground fifteen feet 
square between his monastery buttresses, as I do 
the grounds of Chatsworth or Kew ; and I mean 
by the term " art " as much the old sailor's print of 
the Arethusa bearing up to engage the Belle Poule, 
as I do Raphael's " Disputa," and even rather 
more.— J. Joy For Ever, pp. 111-113. 

Concerning Handwriting. — The scholar who 
among my friends does the most as well as the best 
work, writes the most deliberately beautiful hand : 
and that all the hands of sensible people agree in 
being merely a reduction of good print to a form pro- 
ducible by the steady motion of a pen, and are there- 
fore alwaj^s round and extremelj' upright, becom- 
ing more or less picturesque according to the humor 
of the writer, but never slurred into any unbecoming 
speed, nor subdued by any merely mechanical habit, 
whereas the writing of foolish people is almost 
always mechanically monotonous ; and that of 
begging-letter writers, with rare exception, much 
sloped, and sharp at the turns. — Fors, W~., ]i. 371. 

Thk Theatre. — The idea of making money by a 
theatre, and making it educational at the same 
time, is utterly to be got out of people's heads. 
You don't make money out of a Ship of the Line, 
nor should you out of a church, nor should you 
out of a College, nor should you out of a Theatre. 
— Arrows of the Chace, II., p. 172. 

Words to Shoemakers. — You are to make shoes 
with extremest care to please your customers in all 
matters which they ought to ask ; by fineness of 



566 A liUSKiy ANTHOLOGY. 

fit, excellence of work, and exactitude of compli- 
ance with special orders : but you are not to please 
them in things which they ought not to ask. It is 
2/OW7' business to know how to protect, and adorn, 
the human foot. When a customer wishes you 
really to protect and adorn his or her foot, you are 
to do it with finest care : but if a customer wishes 
you to injure their foot, or disfigure it, you are to 
refuse their pleasure in those particulars, and bid 
them— if they insist on such dis-sevviee—to go else- 
where. You are not, the smiths of you, to put 
horseshoes hot on hoofs; and you are not, the shoe- 
makers of you, to make any shoes with high heels, 
or with vulgar and iiseless decorations, or — if made 
to measure— that will pinch the wearer. — Fors, IV., 
p. 29. 

Legal Documents. — Do you not see how infinite- 
ly advantageous it would be for me (if only I could 
get the other sufferers under this black letter liter- 
ature of legal papers to be of my mind), to clap the 
lawyer and his clerk, once for all, fairly out of the 
way in a dignified almshouse, with parchment un- 
limited, and ink turned on at a tap, and mainte- 
nance for life, on the mere condition of their never 
troubling humanity more, with either their script- 
ures or opinions on any subject. — Foi'S, I., p. 216. 

Dyspepsia. — I believe that a large amount of the 
dreamy and sentimental sadness, tendency to rev- 
erie, and general patheticalness of modern life re- 
sults merely from derangement of stomach; holding 
to he Grreek life the same relation that the feverish 
night of an adult does to a child's sleep.— ifo(Zer?i 
Painters, III., p. 200. 

Cuttle-pish Misanthropy.— I came by surprise, 
the other day, on a cuttle-fish in a pool at low tide. 
On being touched with the point of my umbrella, 
he first filled the pool with ink, and then finding 
himself still touched, in the darkness, lost his 
temper, and attacked the umbrella with much 
psyche, or anima, hugging it tightly with all his 
eight arms, and making efforts, like an impetuous 



07)7)5 AND ENDS. 5GT 

baby with a coral, to get it into his mouth. On my 
offering hiiu a finger instead, he sucked that Avith 
two or three of his arms, with an apparently ma- 
lignant satisfaction, and, on being shaken off, re- 
tired with an air of frantic misanthroi^y into the 
cloud of his ink. Now, it seems to me not a little 
instructive to reflect how entirely useless such a 
manifestation of a superior being was to his cuttle- 
fish mind ; and how fortunate it was for his fellow- 
octopods that he had no command of pens as well 
as ink, nor any disposition to write on the nature 
of umbrellas or of men. — Contemporary Review, 1871. 

Proving a Nkgative.— Nothing delights a true 
blockhead so much as to prove a negative ; — to 
show that everybody has been wrong. Fancy the 
delicious sensation, to an empty-headed creature, 
of fancying for a moment that he has emptied 
everybody else's head as well as his own ! nay, 
that, for once, his own hollov>^ bottle of a head has 
had the best of other bottles, and has been first 
empty; first to know— nothing. — Ariadne, p. 38. 

The House Fly. — I believe we can nowhere find 
a better type of a perfectly free creature than in the 
common house fly. Nor free only, but brave; and 
irreverent to a degree which I think no human 
republican could by any philosophy exalt himself 
to. . , . Strike at him with your hand ; and to 
him, the mechanical fact and external aspect of the 
matter is, Mdiat to you it would be, if an acre of red 
clay, ten feet thick, tore itself up from the ground 
in one massive field, hovered over you in the air for 
a second, and came crashing down with an aim. 
That is the external aspect of it ; the inner aspect, 
to his fly's mind, is of a quite natural and unim- 
portant occurrence — one of the momentary condi- 
tions of his active life. He steps out of the way of 
your hand, and alights on the back of it. — Athena, 
p. 112. 

Logic. — Any man who can reason at all, does it 
instinctivelj', and takes leaps over intermediate syl- 
logisms by the score, yet never misses his footing at 



m A RUSKiy ANTHOLOnY. 

the end of the leap ; but he who cannot instinc- 
tively argue, might as well, with the gout in both 
feet, try to follow a chamois hunter by the help of 
crutches, as to follow, by the help of syllogism, a 
person who has the right use of his reason. — 3Iodern 
Painters, III., p. 11. 

System-makers.— I suspect that system-makers, 
in general, are not of much more use, each in his 
own domain, than, in that of Pomona, the old 
women who tie cherries upon sticks, for the more 
convenient portableness of the same. To cultivate 
well, and choose well, your cherries, is of some im- 
portance ; but if they can be had in their own wild 
way of clustering about their crabbed stalk, it is a 
better connection for them than any other ; and, if 
they cannot, then, so that they be not bruised, it 
makes to a boy of a j^ractical disposition, not much 
difference whether he gets them by handfuls, or in 
beaded symmetry on the exalting stick. — Modern 
Painters, III., p. 18. 

Gipsy Fortune-telling.— The poor servant- 
maid who has hoped that in the stars above might 
be read, by the stained Avanderer's dark eyes, 
some twinkling sentence of her narrow destiny, is 
below contempt, forsooth, in the minds of persons 
who believe, on the delicatest suggestion of Mr. 
Tiggs and the Board, that it is the placid purpose 
of Heaven, through its rolling years forevermore, to 
pay them forty per cent, on their unpaid-up capi- 
tal, for smoking their cigars and picking their 
teeth. — Roadside Songs of Tuscany, p. 201, Eng. Ed. 

Fishing Boats. — I doubt if ever academic grove 
were half so fit for profitable meditation as the 
little strip of shingle between two black, steep over- 
hanging sides of stranded fishing-boats. The 
clear, heavy water-edge of ocean rising and falling 
close to their bows, in that unaccountable way 
which the sea lias always in calm weather, turning 
the pebbles over and over, as if with a rake, to look 
for something, and then stopping a moment down 
at the bottom of the bank, and coming up again 



ODDS AXD E^^DS. 56d 

with a little nni and clash, throwing a foot's depth 
of salt crystal in an instant between you and 
the round stone you were going to take in your 
hand, sighing alfthe while as if it would infinitely 
rather be doing something else. And the dark 
flanks of the fishing-boats all aslope above, in 
their shining quietness, hot in the morning sun, 
rusty and seamed with square patches of plank 
nailed over their rents, just rough enough to let the 
little flat-footed fisher-children haul or twist them- 
selves up to the gunwales, and drop back again 
along some stray rope; just round enough to 
remind us, in their broad and gradual curves, of 
the sweep of the green surges they know so well, 
and of the hours wlien those old sides of seared 
timber, all ashine with the sea, plunge and dip into 
the green purity of the mounded waves more joy- 
fully than a deer lies down among the grass of 
spring, the soft white cloud of foam opening 
momentarily at the bows, and fading or flying 
high into the breeze where the sea-gulls toss and 
shriek,— the joy and beauty of it, all the while, so 
mingled with the sense of unfathomable danger, 
and the human effort and sorrow going on perpet- 
ually from age to age, waves rolling for ever, and 
winds moaning for ever, and faithful hearts trusting 
and sickening for ever, and brave lives dashed 
away about the rattling beach like weeds for 
ever ; and still at the helm of every lonely boat, 
through starless night and hopeless dawn, His hand, 
who spread the fisher's net over the dust of the 
Sidonian palaces, and gave into the fisher's hand 
the keys of the kingdom of heaven. —Harbors of 
England, pp. 9-10. 

Ships of the Lixe.— It will always be said of 
us with unabated reverence "They Built Ships 
OF THE Line." Take it all in all, a Ship of the 
Line is the most honorable thing that man, as a 
gregarious animal, has ever produced.— i?ar&o?s of 
England, p. 12. 
The Bow of a Ship.— That rude simplicity of 



570 A llUSKm ANTHOLOGY. 

bent plank that can breast its way through the 
death that is in the deei^ sea, has in it the soul of 
shipping. Beyond this we may have more work, 
more men, more money; Ave cannot have more mir- 
acle. . . . The boat's bow is naively perfect : com- 
plete without effort. The man wTio made it knew 
not he was making anything beautiful, as he bent 
its jilanks into those mysterious, ever changing 
curves. It grows under his hand into the image of 
a sea-shell ; the seal, as it were, of the flowing of 
the great tides and streams of ocean stamped on its 
delicate rounding. He leaves it, when all is done, 
without a boast. It is simple work, but it will keep 
out water. And every plank thenceforward is a 
Fate, and has men's lives wreathed in the knots of 
it, as the cloth-yard shaft had their deaths in its 
plumes.— Har&or^ of England, p. 112. 

Fox-HuNTiKG. — Reprobation of fox-hunting on 
the ground of cruelty to the fox is entirely futile. 
More pain is caused to the draught-horses of London 
in an hour by avariciously overloading them, than 
to all the foxes in England by the hunts of the year; 
and the rending of body and heart in human death, 
caused by neglect, in our country cottages, in any 
one winter, could not be equalled by the death- 
pangs of any quantity of foxes. 

The real evils of fox-hunting are that it wastes 
the time, misapplies the energy, exhausts the wealth, 
narrows the capacity, debases the taste, and abates 
the honor of the upper classes of this country ; and 
instead of keeping, as your correspondent " Forest- 
er " supposes, "thousands from the work-house," 
it sends thousands of the poor, both there, and into 
the grave. 

The athletic training given by fox-hunting is ex- 
cellent; and such training is vitally necessary to 
the upper classes. But it ought always to be in real 
service to their country ; in personal agricultural 
labor at the head of their tenantry ; and in extend- 
ing English life and dominion in waste regions, 
against the adverse powers of nature. Let them 



ODDS AND ENDS. 571 

become Captains of Eiiiigration ; — hunt clown the 
foxes that spoil the Vineyard of the World ; and 
keep their eyes on the leading hound, in Packs of 
Men. — Arrows of the Chace, II., p. 118. 

Children in Art.— If you will overpass quickly 
in your minds what you reuiember of the treasures 
of Greek antiquity, you Avill find that, among them 
all, you can get no notion of what a Greek little girl 
was like. Matronly Junos, and tremendous Deme- 
ters, and Gorgonian Minervas, as many as you 
please ; but for my own part, always speaking as a 
Goth, I had much rather have had some idea of the 
Spartan Helen dabbling with Castor and Pollux 
in the Eurotas,— none of them over ten years 
old. ... 

I noted the singular defect in Greek art, that it 
never gives you any conception of Greek children. 
Neither— up to the thirteen century -does Gothic 
art give you any conception of Gothic children ; 
for, until the thirteenth century, the Goth was not 
perfectly Christianized, and still thought only of 
the strength of humanity as admirable in battle or 
venerable in judgment, but not as dutiful in peace, 
nor happy in simplicity. 

But from the moment when the spirit of Christi- 
anity had been entirely interpreted to the Western 
races, the sanctity of womanhood worshipped in the 
Madonna, and the sanctity of childhood in unity 
with that of Christ, became the light of every 
honest hearth, and the joy of every pure 9,nd 
chastened soul. . . . Till at last, bursting out like 
one of the sweet Surrey fountains, all dazzling 
and pure, you have the radiance and innocence or 
reinstated infant divinity showered again among 
the flow^ers of English meadows by Mrs. Allingham 
and Kate Greenaway.— ^r^ of England, pp. 45, 
61-63. 

The Child-angels.- [Here is a pretty descrip- 
tion of the work of ministering angels, as shown 
in Richter's lovely illustrati-o-ns of the Lord's 
Prayer] :— 



572 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

The real and living death-angel, girt as a pilgrim 
for journey, and softly crowned with flowers, beck- 
ons at the dying mother's door ; child-angels sit 
talking face to face with mortal children, among 
the flowers ; — hold them by their little coats, lest 
they fall on the stairs • — Avhisper dreams of heaven 
to them, leaning over their pillows ; carry the 
sound of the church bells for them far through the 
air ; and even descending lower in service, fill little 
cups with honey, to hold out to the weary bee.— 
Mhics of the Dust, p. 135. 

The Ve^^etian Doggie.— It was to be drowned, 
soon after its eyes had opened to the light of sea 
and sky, — a poor worthless wet flake of floss silk it 
had like to have been, presently. Toni pitied it. 
pulled it out of the water, bought it for certain 
sous, brought it home under his arms. What it 
learned out of his heart in that half-hour, again, 
St. Theodore knows ; — but the mute spiritual creat- 
ure has been his own, verily, from that day, and 
only lives for him. Toni, being a pious Toni as 
well as a pitiful, went this last autumn, in his holi- 
day, to s'ee the Pope ; but did not think of taking 
the doggie with him, (who, St. Theodore would 
surely have said, ought to have seen the Pope too). 
Whereupon, the little silken mystery Avholly re.- 
fused to eat. No coaxing, no tempting, no nurs- 
ing, would cheer the desolate-minded thing from 
that sincere fast. It would drink a little, and was 
warmed and medicined as best might be. Toni 
came back from Rome in time to save it ; but it 
was not its gay self again for many and many a day 
after ; the terror of such loss, as yet again possible, 
weighing on the reviving mind, (stomach, sujipos- 
ably, much oiit of order also). It greatly dislikes 
getting itself wet ; for, indeed, the tangle of its mor- 
tal body takes half a day to dry ; some terror and 
thrill of uncomprehended death, perhaps, remain- 
ing on it, also, — who knows ; but once, after this 
terrible Roman grief, running along the quay 
cheerfully beside rowing Toni, it saw him turn the 



ODDS AND ENDS. 573 

gondola's head six feet aside, as if going away. The 
dog dashed into the water hke a mad thing. " See, 
now, if aught but deatli part thee and me." — Fors, 
III., p. 413. 

Heaven lies about us in our Infancy.— What 
do you suppose makes all men look back to the 
time of childhood with so much regret, (if their 
childhood has been, in any moderate degree, 
healthy or peaceful) ? That rich charm, which the 
least possession had for us, was in consequence of 
the poorness of our treasures. That miraculous 
aspect of the nature around us, was because we had 
seen little, and knew less. Every increased posses- 
sion loads us with a new weariness ; every piece of 
new knowledge diminishes the faculty of admira- 
tion ; and Death is at last appointed to take us 
from a scene in which, if we wei-e to stay longer, no 
gift could satisfy us, and no miracle surprise. — 
Eagle's Nest, p. 58. 

As to school and college studies making you very 
happy, I know something, myself, of nearly all 
these matters — not much, but still quite as much as 
jnost men under the ordinary chances of life, with 
a fair education, are likely to get together — and I 
assure you the knowledge does not make mehappj- 
at all. When I was a boy I used to like seeing the 
sunrise. I didn't know, then, there were any spots 
on the sun ; now I do, and am alwaj'S frightened 
least any more should come. When I was a boy, 
1 used to care about pretty stones. I got some 
Bristol diamonds at Bristol, and some dog-tooth 
spar in Derbyshire ; my whole collection had 
cost, perhaps three half-crowns, and was worth 
considei-ably less ; and I knew nothing whatever, 
rightlj', about any single stone in it ; — could not 
even spell their names : but words cannot tell the 
joy they used to give me. Now, I have a collection 
of minerals worth, perhaps, fi-om two to three thou- 
sand pounds; and I know more about some of them 
than most other people. But I am not a whit hap- 
pier, either for my knowledge, or possessions, fox* 



D74 A nUSKlN' ANTHOLOGY. 

other geolog'ists dispute my theories, to my grievous 
indignation and discontentment ; and I am miser- 
able about all my best specimens, because there 
are better in the British Museum.— i^'orif, I., p. 43. 

No toy you can bestow will supersede the pleas- 
ure the child has in fancying something that isn't 
there ; and the most instructive histories you can 
compile for it of the wonders of the world will never 
conquer the interest of the tale which a clever child 
can tell itself, concerning the shipwreck of a rose- 
leaf in the shallows of a rivulet. 

One of the most curious proofs of the need to chil- 
dren of this exercise of the inventive and believ- 
ing power, — the hesoin de croire, which precedes 
the besoin (Vaimer, you will find in the way you 
destroy the vitality of a toy to them, by bringing it 
too near the imitation of life. You never find a 
child make a pet of a mechanical mouse that runs 
about the floor — ^of a poodle that yelps — of a 
tumbler who jumps upon Avires. The child falls in 
love with a quiet thing, with an ugly one — nay, it 
may be, with one, to us, totally devoid of meaning. 
My little — ever-so-many-times-grand — cousin, Lily, 
took a bit of stick with a round knob at the end of 
it for her doll one day ; — nursed it through any 
number of illnesses with the most tender solicitude; 
and, on the deeply-important occasion of its hav- 
ing a new nightgown made for it, bent down her 
mother's head to receive the cofidential and timid 
whisper — " Mamma, perhaps it had better have no 
sleeves, because, as Bibsey has no arms, she mightn't 
like it.''— Art of England, pp. 54-55 

National Traits. — 1 have seen much of Irish 
character, and have watched it closely, for I have 
also much loved it. And I think the form of fail- 
ure to which it is most liable is this, that being gen- 
erous-hearted, and wholly intending always to do 
right, it does not attend to the external laws of 
right, but thinks it must necessarily do right 
because it means to do so, and therefore does wrong 
without finding it out ; and then wlien the conse- 



ODDS AND ENDS. 675 

QUences of its wrong come uiwu it, or upon others 
connected with it, it cannot conceive tliat the 
wrong is in anywise of its causing or of its doing, 
but flies into wratli, and a strange agony of desire 
for justice, as feoling itself wholly innocent, which 
leads it farther astray, until there is nothing that it 
is not capable of doing with a good conscience. — 
Mystery of Life, p. 132. 

Scottish ast> Irish Valor— This much remains 
of Arthurian blood in us, that the richest fighting 
element in the British army and navy is British 
native,— that is to say, Highlander, Irish, Welsh, 
and CoTni&h.— Pleasures of England, p. 22. 

The battles both of Waterloo and Alma were 
won by Irish and Scots — by the terrible Scots 
Greys, and by Sir Colin's Highlanders. Your ' thin 
red line,' was kept steady at Alma only by Colonel 
Yea's swearing at them. — Pleasures of England, 
p. 53. 

The Scottish Character.— It is strange that, 
after much hunting, I cannot find authentic note 
of the day when Scotland took the thistle for her 
emblem ; and I have no space (in this chapter at 
least) for tradition ; but, with whatever lightness 
of construing we may receive the symbol, it is ac- 
tually the truest that could hav^e been found, for 
some conditions of the Scottish mind. There is no 
flower which the Proserpina of our Northern Sicily 
cherishes more dearly : and scarcely any of us 
recognize enough the beautiful power of its close- 
set stars, and rooted radiance of ground leaves ; 
yet the stubbornness and ungraceful rectitude of 
its stem, and the besetting of its wholesome sub- 
stance with that fringe of offence, and the forward- 
ness of it, and dominance, — I fear to lacess some of 
my dearest friends if I went on : — let them rather, 
with Bailie Jarvie's true conscience, take their 
Scott from the inner slielf in their heart's library 
which all true Scotsmen give him, and trace, with 
the swift reading of memory, the characters of 
Fergus M'lvor, Hector M'lntyre, Mause Headrigg, 



576 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 

Alison Wilson, Richie Mouiplies, and Andrew 
Fairservice ; and then say, if the faults of all these, 
drawn as they are with a precision of touch like a 
Corinthian sculptor's of the acanthus leaf, can be 
found in anything like the same strength in other 
races, or if so stobbornly folded and starched nioni- 
plies of irritating kindliness, selfish friendliness, 
lowly conceit, and intolerable fidelity, are native 
to any other spot of the wild earth of the habitable 
globe. . . . In exact opposition to the most solemn 
virtue of Scotland, the domestic truth and tender- 
ness breathed in all Scottish song, you have this 
special disease and mortal cancer, this woody-fibri- 
ness, literally, of temper and thought : the consum- 
mation of which into pvirc lignite, or rather black 
Devil's charcoal — the sap of the birks of Aberfeldy 
become cinder, and the blessed juices of them, 
deadly gas, — you may know in its pure blackness 
best in the work o'f the greatest of these ground- 
growing Scotchmen, Adam Smith. 

No man of like capacitj^ I believe, born of any 
other nation, could have deliberately, and with no 
momentary shadow of suspicion or question, for- 
malized the spinous and monstrous fallacy that hu- 
man commerce and policy are natiiraUy founded on 
the desire of every man to possess his neighbor's 
goodii.— Proserpina, pp. 87-89. 

Scotch Streets axd Scotch Lassies. — I observe 
the good j)eople of Edinburgh rejoice proudly at 
having got an asphalt esplanade at the end of 
Prince's Street, instead of cabbage-sellers. Alas ! 
my Scottish friends; all that Prince's Street of yours 
has not so much beauty in it as a single cabbage- 
stalk, if you had eyes in your heads, — rather the 
extreme reverse of beauty ; and there is not one of 
the lassies who now stagger up and down the burn- 
ing marie in high-heeled boots and French bonnets, 
who would not look a thousand-fold prettier, and 
feel, there's no counting how much nobler, bare- 
headed but for the snood, and bare-foot on old- 
fashioned grass b}^ the Nor' loch side, bringing 



ODDS AND ENDS. 577 

home from market, basket on arm, pease for papa's 
dinner, and a bunch of cherries for baby.- ^f)t. 
Mark's Best, p. 31. 

The French and German Natures.— A French- 
man is selfish only when he is vile and lustful ; but 
a German, selfish in the purest states of virtue and 
morality. A Frencliman is arrogant only in ignor- 
ance ; but no quantity of learning ever makes a 
German modest. "Sir," says Albert Diirer of his 
own work, (and he is the raodestest German I 
know,) "it cannot be better done." Luther se- 
renely damns the entire gospel of St. James, be- 
cause St. James happens to bo not percisely of his 
own opinions. 

Accordingly, when the Germans get command of 
Lombardy, they bombard Venice, steal her pictures, 
(which they can't understand a single touch of,) 
and entirely ruin the country, morally and pliysi- 
cally, leaving behind them misery, vice, and intense 
hatred of themselves, wlierever their accursed feet 
have trodden. They do precisely the same thing 
by France — crush her, rob her, leave her in misery 
of rage and shame ; and return home, smacking 
their lips, and singing Te Deums. 

But when tlie Frencli conquer England, their 
action upon it is entirely beneficent. Gradually, 
the country, from a nest of restless savages, be- 
comes strong and glorious; and having good ma- 
terial to work upon, tliey make of us at last a nation 
stronger than themselves. 

Then the strength of France pei'islies, virtually, 
through the folly of St. Louis ; — her piety evapor- 
ates, her lust gathers infectious poAver, and the 
modern Cite rises round the Sainte Chapelle. — Fors, 
IL, p. 184. 

French Insensibility. — I was beguiled the other 
day, by seeing it announced as a '' Comedie," into 
going to see "Frou-Frou.''' Most of you probably 
know that the three first of its five acts are comedy, 
or at least playful drama, and that it plunges doAvn, 
in the two last, to the sorrowfulest catastrophe of 



578 A EUSKIIf ANTHOLOGY. 

all conceivable — though too frequent In daily life 
— in which inetrievable grief is brought about by 
the passion of a moment, and the ruin of all that 
she loves, caused by the heroic error of an entirely 
good and unselfish person. The sight of it made 
me thoroughly ill, and I was not myself again for 
a week. 

But, some time afterwards, I was speaking of it 
to a lady who knew French character well ; and 
asked her how it was possible for a j^eople so quick 
in feeling to endure the action before them of a sor- 
row so poignant. She said, "It is because they 
have not sympathy enough : they are interested 
only by the external scene, and are, in truth, at 
present, dull, not quick in feeling. My own French 
maid went the other evening to see that very play : 
when she came home, and I asked her what she 
thought of it, she said, ' it was charming, and she 
had amused herself immensely.' ' Amused ! but is 
not the story very sad ? ' ' Oh, yes, mademoiselle, it 
is bien triste, but it is charming ; and then, how 
pretty Frou-Frou looks in her silk dress ! ' " — 
Eagle s Nest, p. 51. 

The Swiss " States of the Forest."— Beneath 
the glaciers of Zermatt and Evolena, and on the 
scorching slopes of the Valais, the peasants re- 
mained in an aimless torpor, unheard of but as the 
obedient vassals of the great Bishopric of Sion. 
But where the lower ledges of calcareous rock were 
broken by the inlets of the Lake Lucerne, and brac- 
ing winds penetrating from the north forbade the 
growth of the vine, compelling the peasantry to 
adopt an entirelj^ pastoral life, was reared another 
race of men. Their narrow domain should be 
luarked by a small green spot on every map of 
Europe. It is about forty miles from east to 
west ; as many from north to south : yet on that 
shred of rugged ground, while every kingdom 
of the world around it rose or fell in fatal change, 
and every multitudinovis race mingled or wasted 
itself in various dispersion and decline, the sim- 



ODDS AND ENDS. 679 

])le shepherd dynasty remained changeless. There 
is no record of their origin. They are neither 
Goths, Burgundians, Romans, nor Germans. They 
have been for ever Helvetii, and for ever free. — 
Modern Painters, V., p. 101. 

The Italian Peasantry. — The people of Italy 
are dying for need of love: only in returning love 
for love they become themselves, and enter into 
possession of their own souls by the gift of them. 

I have learned this not from Francesca only. 
Strangely, another dear American friend, Charles 
Eliot Norton, with his wife and family, residing in 
Italy — I forget how long — (I was with them in their 
villa near Siena in 1873), were the first to tell me 
this quite primary character of the Italian peasan- 
try. Their own princes have left them, and abide 
in their great cities — no one cares for the moun- 
taineers ; and their surprise, in the beginning, at 
finding any one living amidst them who could love 
ihem; their answer, in the end, of gratitude flowing 
iiie the Fonte Branda, as he described them to me, 
have remained ever since among the brightest and 
the SMoidest beacons, and reproaches, of my own too 
selfish ^Ke- — Roadside Songs of Tuscany, p. 313. 



/" 



APPENDIX. 

-RPSKTl^'S WRITINGS IN CLASSIFIED GROUPS. 
WITH THE DATES OF TIKST PUBLICATION. 



PAINTING. 

Modern Painters— 1843-1860. 

Various Papers on Pre-Raphaelitism -1851-1883. 

Giotto and liis Works in Padna— 1853. 

The Harbors of England (Letterpress to Engravings of Turner 
Drawings)— 1856. 

Relation Between Michael Angelo and Tnitoret— 1872. 

Mornings in Florence (Chiefly Guide-books to Florentine 
Paintings)— 1875-1877. 

St. Mark's Rest— 1877. 

Notes by Mr. Ruskin on his Drawings by the late J. M. W. Tur- 
ner— 1878. 

The Art of England— 1883. 

MISCELLANEOUS ART WRITINGS. 

Tlie Two Paths (Lectures on Art in its Application to Decora- 
tion and Manufacture) — 1859. 

Lectures on Art — 1870. 

Ariadne Florentina (Engraving)— 1873. 

Val d'Arno (Lectures on Tuscan Art)— 1874. 

Laws of Fgsole (Elements of Drawing)— 1877. 

Arrows of the Cliace, Vol. I. (Miscellaneous Newspaper Arti- 
cles)— 1880. 

The Art of England (Leeh, Du Maurier, etc.)— 1883. 

Roadside Songs of Tuscany (Notes on Miss Francesca Alexan- 
der's Drawings)— 1883. 

ARCHITECTURE. 

Seven Lamps of Architecture — 1849. 

Stones of Venice— 1851-1853. 

Edinburgh Lectures on Arcliitecture (I. and H.) — 1853. 

580 



APPENDIX. 581 

The Two ruths (Lecture IV., Influence of Imagination on Archi- 
tecture)— 1859. 
Bible of Amiens— 1881. 
Arrows of the Chace, I., pp. 122-161—1880. 

SCULPTURE. 

Stones of Venice— 1851-1853. 
Aratra Pen telici -1872. 

ECONOMIC WORKS. 

Unto This Last— 1860. 

IMunera Pulveris— 1862. 

Crown of Wild Olive— 1866. 

Time and Tide, by Weare and Tyne— 1867. 

Fors Clavlgera (Here and There)— 1871-1878. 

A Joy Forever— 1880. 

NOTE.^Compare also article on Usury In " Contemporary Review," 1880, p> 316, et 
6eq.; and " Home and its Economies " in the same Review for May 1873. Also "Arrows 
of the Chace," VoL II. 

SCIENCE. 

(-Ethics of the Dust— 1866. ) 

} In Montibus Sanctis, Part I.-1885. V Mineralogy. 

(.Deucalion— 1875-1880. j 

f Deucalion— 1875-1880. . I Geolosv. 

I Modern Painters, Vol. IV. (Blountains)— 1856. j " =•' 

f Proserpina— 1879. , , .„ 1 Botany. 

I Modern Painters, Vol. V. (Leaves)— IbfaO. J 

r Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century -1884. 1 ci^mig 

1 Modern Painters, Vol. V.— 1860. J 

Love's Meinie— 1873 (Birds). 

The Eagle's Nest (Relation of Science to Art)— 1872. 

Athena, Queen of the Air (Myths)— 1869. 

Arrows of the Chace (Miscellaneous)— 1880. 

EDUCATION. 

Elements of Perspective— 1&59. 

Sesame and Lilies (Books and Reading, and Education of Girls) 

—1865. 
Fors Clavigera (See especially Letters L.-LIV., also XCV.)— 

1871-187S. 
Elements of Drawing— 1857. 
Instructions in Elementary Drawing— 1872. 
Laws of Fesole (Best Work on Drawing)— 1877. 
Prosei-pina (Botany)— 1879. 
A Museum or Picture Gallery (Six Letters in London Art 

Journal for June and August, 1880). 

LITERATURE. 

King of the Golden River (Fairy Tale)— 1851. 

Modern Painters, Vol. lU.— 1856. 

Fiction, Fair and Foul {Nineteenth Century, 1880, 1881). 



582 AFPENBIX. 

AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 

Fors Clavigera— 1871-1878. 

Notes by Mr. Ruskin on his Drawings by the late J. M. W. 

Turner— 1878. 
My First Editor. An Antobiograpliical Reminiscence {Uni- 

versity Magazine, April, 1878). 
Prseterita. Outlines of Scenes and Thoughts perhaps worthy of 

Memory in my Past Life— 1885. 

FIVE BEST WORKS. 

Modern Painters. 

Unto This Last. 

Crown of Wild Olive. 

Fors Clavigera (first half of it). 

Sesame and Lilies. 

BEST SINGLE WOEK. 
Modern Painters. 



INDEX. 



PAGE 
Aakon 4-,'l 

Accurate work 512 

Achilles 65 

Address, of convict 419 

Admiration, element of education 269 

Admiration, Hope, and Love 335 

Agassiz. Prof. Louis A&i 

Age, old 8:i9 

Air, the 467 

AH Baba 414 

Americans, the, 420, 421 ; civil war of 249 

American girls in Italy, 397-399 

Amiens 167 

Anatomy, destructive to art 40 

Ancestors 29 

Angelico 88, 89 

Angels, Guardian 361 

Apollo Belvidere 27, 168 

Arcadian Valley 490 

Architect, materials of 151 

Architecture, 142-165; a and sculpture, 143. 144; five orders, 144; 
medium-sized blocks in. 145; of cities, 147, 148; suburban, 148; 
European, 152; Roman, Lombard and Arabian styles, 152, 153; 
Gothic, 154-161; (Gothic not the work of the clergy, 154; not 
derived from vegetation, 155; true sources of, 156; poetry of 
Gothic terms, 158; Gothic porch, 158; arch. 158; how to tell 
good Gothic, 159-161;) Renaissance, 161-163; decoration of a., 

164 ; asymmetry and vital carving 164 

Art. Proceeds from the heart, 21; art and mechanism, 22; defi- 
nitions of, 21 and 22; not teachable by rules, 22, 23, 29, 30; con- 
ditions of a school of, 23; grass, flowers, etc.. 24; world's 
focus of, 21; rooted in moral nature. 24. 25: connoisseurs of, 
25, 27; a. and nature-stud j', 26; best art not always wanted, 
26; discipline in art-work, 29; earliest a. linear, 31; creative 
power in, 33; quality, not quantity, of art-study desirable, 33; 
three rules of. 33 ; the same for all time, 33; Etruscan a., 33; 
destruction of, 34; criticism of , 35. 36; a. in the history of 
nations, 41-44; a. in Middle Ages, 46-50: finish, 50-56; g"reat 
a. and great men, 60-67; perambulant, 81, 82; should not be 
too familiar, 146; any a. is good, 313; a. in England, 360; bad 
art in religion, 365-367; there is a science of, 458; science vs. 

art, 459; children in 571 

Art-education, 298-314; to foster art-genius in a youth. 301 ; great- 
est art cannot be taught, 301-303: young folks in picture-gal- 
leries. 307, 308; color, 299; drawing, 299-307; museums. . . .309-315 
Artist, definition of, 22; society and the a., 25; boi-n. not made, 
29; reveals liimself in his work, 31; the British, 61, 62; gen- 
tleness of 75 

Asceticism, three forms of 331 

Association of ideas 68 

Astronomy 297 

Audiences (smooth-downy-curry, etc) 513 



584 INDEX. 

PAGE 

Authorship, 502 (comp. Writing); realism, 511; invention, 510; 
accurate work 513 

Beauty, among the Greeks, 28; distinguished from truth 28, 39 

Betting 353 

Bewick 136 

Bible, 367-369; characters not yet painted 89 

Bills, running up 354 

Birds 427-433 

Bishops 373-375 

Blackfriars Bridge 149 

Blackwood's Magazine 514 

Blake, William 134 

Boats 568 

Books. 416, 503-507; reading a book in the leisurely fashion of 
old, 503; best books written in country, 503; get the author's 
meaning, not your own, 504: stout, well-bound books, 504 ; 
price of, 504: tlie patient fellows in leathern jackets. 505: the 
charmed circle of the great authors. 505; the poor ti-ade of 
the reviewer, .505, 506; some of Ruskin's favorites, .506; too 
many. 513; Ruskinonhisown, 536-.540; (comp. Librui-ies,\^4.) 

Botany, 432-440; 296-297 (teaching of j; nomenclature 4.34 

Bourges cathedral 58 

Boy, and dog-flght 337 

Boys 289, 392 

Brantwood, 12, .556. See Coniston, 540. 

Brick and terra-cotta 145 

Browning, Robert 49 

Buffoonery 69 

Burne-Jones ■ ■. 131 

Cacti 338 

Capital, a ploughshare the type of, 205; investments of, 206; in- 
terest-takers, 206; invested, 210-214; (cp. 351.) 

Capital punishment 331 

Capitalists, 194, 210-214; (see 360, 361.) 

Caricature 138 

Cark and Care 345 

Carly le, on the fine arts 51 

Carpaccio's Princess 399 

Casket-talismans of knowledge 347 

Cathedrals, 149-151 ; English c, 150; French c 1.55 

Cervin, Mt 489 

Chaiuouni 499 

Character-painting 511 

Charities, 318. See Ruskin. 

Cheapness 232 

Cliiaroscuro 125, 139 

Child-angels 571-573 

Children, in art, 571 ; parable of the 256-258 

Chimnej's 359 

Chirography 565 

Chiron... " 65 

Christianity, theatrical, 360; in the Middle Ages 379 

Church, going to, 357; the English .371-378 

Cinnamon 434 

Cinderella 390 

Clay, Ume. and flint 443-445 

Classic style 46 

Classical school 106-109 

Claude 107, 108, 114 

Clergy 371-378 

Clouds, 446-453; Storm-CIoud of the Nineteenth Century, 449- 

453: among hills, 468; cumulus cloud 468 

Cluse, bells of 499 

Color. 123-130, 299; color-sense with the Greeks, 126; among the 
Chinese and Hindoos, 127: dead c . 128: five laws of, 129, 1.30; 
in sculpture, 164; of cla.y, lime, and flint 443-445 



INDEX. 888 

PAGE 

263 

Communism 222 

Coinimine of 1871 • aac. 

Coinpetitiou, among minerals j^ ^2 

Composition 241 540 

Coniston '333 

(.oiiseieiice 3g5 

Consecrated water gg^ 

Consecrated ground 'aqq 

Constitution, the British -^j ^gg 

Consumption of wealth g'ggg 

Conventionalism ^^jj 

Convict, the ' ggj 

Cooking 225 226 

Cooperation ■ ■ • ' o.ji 

Co-operative Trade Guilds ''gj 

Copies 26 

Copyists • ■ ■ inn 

Correggio, 52, 56 ; best work by • • • iX^ 

Cottage, English ' 2jg 

Cottager ; 349 

Countryman and Cit — 265 

Country life 402 

Courtship '^'[^''35, 36 

Criticism, 513; art 343 

Cross, one's 395 

Cross, engraving of the .j3g 

Cruilishank '^q 44^ 

Crystals 30 ' 144' 170 

Crystal Palace ' ' 5g5 

Cuttle fish, the jOg 

Cuyp 

362 

D.\NTE i' • ■ u" ■ \' 

Darwin, 458 (peacocks feather). „. . 

Debt, national. 212; getting into ^^ 

Decay of life-forms ggo 

Decisive instant 56-58 

Decoration 540 

Denmark Hill 33(j 

Dependence ; g^ 

Design, imagination in 369-371 

Devil, the , ■ •. 3gg 

Dinrer-party with Christ 207 

DixDM, Thos 73 

Doggie, the . . . ' ' • in^na 

Doges, tombs of the 359 

DolUvr. Father j4q 

iJl^wili^Snctness in; 61 V free iiand ■in,'2C3; ' p.^portion:^ 299; 
ra ki c 803: treasuring, 304: errors of the existing school, 

30] : perspective. 306. 307; drawing Greek mountains 300 

I )ress. in historical painting 352-354 

l»'iiik .^ '■■■.■■■■.'.■.'.'.!'.... 153 

Ducal Palace ■• 32 

Duke of Wellington, statue of • ^q 

I>iiier. ' ' " "/_'i()i^ 106 

Dutch art 5g5 

Dyspepsia 

^ , 40 

Eaolk"s hooded eye 4.^^ 

Earth veil, the ggO 

Edgevvorth, Miss 



586 INDEX. 

PAQH 

elective sj^stem, 274; virtue instinctive, 275; labor and schol- 
arship, 276; grammar of music, 276; emulation bad. 277; com- 
petition injurious, 277-279; words, 279, 280; beautiful speaking, 
281, 282; reading aloud; seeing things, 282; sympathy, 
283; bright children and stupid, 283-285; unjustifiable anibi- 
tiou of would-be geniuses, 283-285; how to be wise, 285; edu- 
cation of children, 287-298; telling what they have seen or 
heard, 287; ed. for different spheres, 288; nature as an edu- 
cator, 288; learning by heart, 288; riding and sailing, 289; boys 
of St. George's Guild, 289; grammar, 290; lying, 290; self- 
reliance, 290; history, 290; English ideas of education, 291; 
sentimental lies in children's books, 291; boys aud squirrels, 
292; ideal elementary scliool, 293; decorations of school- 
rooms, 294; teaching "science, 295; Sir W. Scott, 295-298; ed. 
in art, 298-314; teaching adjusted to capacity, 298; color, 299; 

museums 309-315 

Eels 427 

Egotism 329 

Eliot, George 521 

Elocution 281 , 282 

Employment 193,194 

England, green fields in, 264; cruellest and foolishest nation on 

the earth, 417, 418; John Bull as a small peddler 418 

English nation, the bull the type of, 403; always wanting to kill 
something, 404; destruction of landscapes by, 404-406; con- 
science of 414 

Engraving 133, 155 

Equality 421 

Etching 138 

Etruscan art 33 

Eva, in " Uncle Tom's Cabin" 27 

Exchange, analyzed 234, 235 

Executions of poor 220 

Expenditure of wealth 235-238 

Facts, looking them in the face 332 

Faith 503 

Fancy 67 

Fate, confronting of 66 

Fathers, our, imitation of 29 

Fatigue 561 

Fields, green 264 

Fiction, 518-530; literature of prison-house, 519-521; Scott, 521; 

and realism 511 

Finish 50-56 

Fishing-boats 568 

Fislimongers 372, 373 

Flaxman 138 

Florentine art 73 

Flowers, 475-477; final cause of seed 436 

Fools 338 

Forbes. James 462 

Fortune-telling . 508 

Fortunes, large 202, 203 

Forty Thieves 414 

Fountain 541 

Fox-hunting 570 

Fra Angelico 128 

France (commune of 1S71) 222 

Francesca ( Alexander) 574 

Fraud, in trade 227-230 

Free hand ■. 263 

Free trade 233, 235 

French, the, 572; Insensibility of 573 

French landscape 109 

Fresh air and light 264-2G7 

Friendship's Offering 538 

Fruit 437 



INDEX. 68t 

PAQB 

Gardens 564 

Gardening 392 

Garden walls 5^1 

Garlic 438 

Gentlemanliness 354-357 

Geography 298 

Geology.. 460-462 

Germans, the ^'<^ 

German Sciiwarmerei 510 

Giotto, 130: great colorist, 75, 76; his "O" 76 

Girl, little g. with large shoes 216 

Girls, 389-403; are to be happy, 389; Cinderella, 390; reading the 
Bible, 390; cooking, 391; sewing and dress-making, 391; bits 
of work for, 39^; gardening for, 39-^; cruelly of, 393; vanity 
of, 394; two mirrors 395; general hints on edncation of, 396, 

397; American girls in Italy, 397-399; courtship 402 

Glaciers 463.463 

Glass 59, 60 

God, existence of, 3,58; and nature 361 

Gold of knowledge, invisible 347 

Gold coin 186 

Gothic. See Architecture. 

Gothic palaces of Venice 94, 95 

Government, 358-264; necessity of law, 260, 261; American 421 

Grass 479^81 

Greek, 73; G. ideal is design, 28; G. art in general, 44-46; religion 
of. 378, 379; tragedy, 510; vase, type of fiction, 518; children. 571 

Greenaway, Miss Kate 110, 571 

'• Griffith Gaunt" 416 

Grotesque, definition of the 33 

Habits, little 340, 341 

Handwriting f i?i 

Harrison, Mr. W. H 538 

Hawthorn (bush) ?^ 

Heaven ^So 

Hedgehogs and grapes ocn o-i 

Hell and the Devil a\1 

Heroines, modern -■ ■ 4].^ 

Historical painting **' i^i, 

Holbein 41-2 

Holyoake, Geo. Jacob ~~'^ 

Homes, permanent. 146; suitable 14" 

Honest man. 184 (is that all?). 

Horse, at railway station 3J.) 

Horses and wine 41.5 

Hotel, Umf raville ■ • 411; 

Human work as ornament ^"' ^', 

Hunt, William '4 

Hurricane 469 

Ice and frost 470, 471 

Idleness ^'^'i^Jh 

Idolatry : '''•S 

Illuminated windows, 136; manuscripts. 135,136; wntmg 399 

Imagination, in art, 67-70; basis of sympathy, 345; fatigue of... _ 563 

Imitation and finish or i 

Immortality *4 

Impressions, first and also last ^0« 

India, resource for lovers 415 

Instinct "^ 

Interest. 210-214; (comp. 251.) ^ 

Invention and composition ' • 

Invention (of the Germans) °i'^ 

Irreverence l}p 

Italian peasantry • ■ • 5';* 

Italy 39(-399 



588 INDEX. 

Kerosene 421 

Kings, mosquitoes, or gad-flies, 259; real 40t), 410 

Knowledge, meat of 270 

Labor, 191-194, (cp. 243. 244,— machinery,) 221-225; paid at fixed 

rate, 221 ; head and hand compared 221 

Labor and Capital 206-210, 217-219 

Laborer's pension 219 

Land 238-243 

Landscape, modern profanation of. and low idea of. 47, 48; (see 
109-111 and 56;i;) destruction of, in Great Britain, 404-406; 

aesthetic aspects of, 494-^96; French, 498; Swiss 499-501 

Law 565 

Lawyers 185 

Lawerv 335 

Leaves 439, 472-475 

Lectures, 512. Comp. Audiences. 

Leech, John , 138, 139 

Legal documents 565 

Leonardo, 29, 114; as finisher 51 

Leslie 74 

Le ters of alphabet in art 356 

Lewis, John 139 

Liberty 262-264, 421 

Libraries, 564 ; national 275 

Lichens 481 

Life, a mystery, 332; gradation of 364 

Liquor Question 352-354 

Literature 502-531 

Liturgies 371, 372 

Logic 567 

London (a squirrel-cage) 412-414 

Longfellow 49 

Loire river 498 

Lords of Great Britain, Raskin on, 406-410; strong-bodied pau- 
pers 408-414 

Lovers 415 

Love-making, modern 330 

Lowell, James Russell 346 

Luxury 236 

Luini 29,84 

Machinery 243,244 

Mantegna 73 

Maimfactory chimneys 359 

Marbles, the , 442, 443 

Massacio 109 

Masters, the 60-67; 222, 223 

Matterhorn 489 

McCosh, Rev. James 363 

Meliorism 333 

Memory of great artists 68 

INlerchant. function of, in a state, 226-230; heroism needed 227-230 

]\letaphj'sicians 363 

Michael Angelo. 38-40. 51, 56 (best work). 

Middle Ages, 46-.50; castles in the, 144; asceticism in, 331; Chris- 

tianitj' in 379 

Millais 131 

Blillionaire, the beggared 238 

" Mill on the Floss" 521 

Milton 363 

Minerals, 440-446; Ruskin's 556 

Miracles 561 

Mirrors, the two 395 

Mob. the 403-419 

" Modern Painters." 538; do., vol. II 361 

Money, 1S5. 186. 189: defined, 19.'); ill-got 330 

Money-making mob 183 



INDEX. 589 

FAQB 

. . . .317, 318 

the cross fitted to the back '.'.'.'.'.'.'.'.'.'.'..■■ -i^^ 

Moss .... ,„ ,-,i,y.- :,Vj,.i,iJie Ages ' 47;' dawn ontheV484; morn- 
''^"i^fou:'^'^ disrance'!485,4&4; uses, 485-488 ; drawing a ^^^ 

m., 488; slaty precipices • -5 

Miirillo ."..!!.!!!... .309-315 

Musl^ grammaV of; 276 ; in Ruskiii's Utopia; ;;;;;;;;;; ■ • ■ • 3|0 

Music and song 514-518 

Myths 

Nations, three books of, 21; intense life, or vitality, of, 184; a ^^^ 
Natux^^-^ril^alsignificauce of loveof:490;497; u. inth« ^^^ 

Nat^^ih£?^-y:29n^:456;inmuseums;;:;;:::.;;;:;:::::;;3.o,3n 

Negative, proving a ...203 

Noblesse ^^^''S>i ■■■-■■■■ --i:,:-: ; ; ; ; . 89, 431 , 574 

Norton, Professor Charles Ehot ....;.... 28 

Nude, the 

438 

Oat. ' 421 

Oil 70 

Oil-painting 438 

Onion , 330 

Opinions, always changing ■ 340 

Optimism 437 

Orange ■ 36, 37 

Ornament, human work as 286 

Oxford Park ■ • • 286 

Oxford students, advice to 

PAIKTIKO, 70-130; i. Ih. ^^^^^l^!:J!l "^^^ 
r ^;%J.etr^'' a.^d ^p.',^ "^^ftu^ of touch 74, English 

ParS^^llS,223rstatueofstrasbou;-gin.-.-.v.;;;;;;;;;..366 

Parties, national ... 387 

Passion of Christ 507 

Patmore, Coventry ' ^75 

" Pauvre Enfant " 055 

Peace, two kinds [ 4.-,8 

Peacock 338 

People, foolish 433 

Perfumes ' ' 3O6, 307 

Perspective 363 

Philosophers .38 

Photography, in art .. 194, 195 

Picnic Party, the great. ..._ ■ ^ 39^ 40 

Picture, most precj^ous jn the woikl ... ■ v- , ' -gj- p / perambu- 
^'°S'8l':'^2r|aIi^rl^s, ^'^e^^X^'t^^r. urJ^e? glass .^^313 

Picturesque, the 535 

Pig. the Bewickiaa ' ' ' 85 

Pigments 477-479 

Pines ■■■■ ••; 170 

Pfea, in middle ages, 49; duomoof • ^gg 

Pisano, Niccola 435 

Plant 58 

Plate, gold and silver 348 

Pocock, Thomas 



590 INDEX. 

PAGE 

Poetry, and painting. 74; trashy poetry, 507; pastoral, 508; Ras- 
kin's 530, 531 

Poetical justice 330 

Political economy. Compare under specific heads, as " Demand 
and Supply," "Money," etc. (comp. also 408); defined, 181- 
183; summed up, 10, 17; distinguished from mercantile eoon- 
omy, 182; object of, 183; currency. 185, 180; money, 185, 186; 
intrinsic value, 186; wealth, 189-191 ; wealth, money, and riches 
defined, 189; property defined, iS5; on cooperative trade- 
guilds, see 321 (see also 314-319). 

Politics, young men in, 260; machinery and p 263 

Poor, executions of the 220 

Pope 507 

Poppy 437 

Porcelain-painting 85 

Portrait-painting 71 

Potter, Paul 105 

Pound piece, the English 31 

Poussin, Nicolo 108, 109 

Poverty, origin of, 206 210; 214-220; little girl with large shoes, 

216 ; Savoyard cottage 216 

Prayer ' 857, :i58 

Pre-Raphaelitism 130-132 

Prodigal Son ,^ 361 

Profanity 334 

Professions, in Ruskin's Utopia 321 

Property, defined, 235 (comp. Wealth, Riches, etc.). 

Protestant Blind Pension Society 348 

Provincial art 61, 64 

Pucelle 222 

Pulpit, of to-day 375-378 

Queen of May 360 

Railroads, 240-243, nation should own, 242; to Hell 404 

Rain 468 

Rapliael. 38-40, 51, 56 (best work), 73, 87, 139 (chiaroscuro). 

Reade, Chailes , 416 

Reading aloud 281, 282 

Realism, 511; of great artists 64 

Red ink 15 

Reh'gion, 357-380; r. and women, 386; evangelical people, 357, 
3")S; prayer. 357, 358; church, .3.57; English r. a mockery, 359; 
leligious life, when possible, 361; bad religious art, 365-367; 

of tlie Greeks 378 

Rembrandt 54, 134, 139 

Rent 239 

Reverence 336 

Reynolds, Sir Joshua 58 

Riches, 189 (definition), 194-210; power and opportunities of, 

1 98-201 and 203. 204 ; origin of 206-210, 237 

Richter, illustrations of 571, 572 

Rivers, geologically considered 459 

Roland ., 222 

Root of plant 485 

Ro.ssetti 1.31 

Rubens 106 

Rural life 265, 494 

Ruskin, John, childhood, 11; teacher in London and Cambridge, 
12; personal appearance, 19; Carlyle and R., 13; st\ le of, 14. 
15; cardinal dates in his art-life, 15; art-teachings summed 
up, 15; religion, 15, 16; charities. 16; political economy of, 
16. 17; paints Lake of Como, 52; first piece of published writ- 
ing, 453; any one welcome to read his letters, .531 ; " Ai, Ai," 
531; his friends, .532; love of money, 532: nied);i?val tenden- 
cies. 532; charity by stealth, 532; on capital punishment, .5.32' 
St. Bruno's lilies. .533; contradictions of, 533; conimnnist or 
the old school, 533; not altogether a conservative, 534; Apolo- 



INDEX. M 

PAGE 

gia (" because I have passed my life," etc.), S34; in Assisi, 
535; thinks his proper business is science, 536; " nolo episco- 
pari," 53(j; as a publisher. 536-538; about his own books, 536- 
540; first printed piece, 538; how he ivrites, 539; at Denmark 
Hill, 540; reform experiments, 540-.'542 (tea-shop, etc.); remi- 
niscences of childhood, 542-553; tours with parents, 543-548; 
early religious traiuiugr and Bible studies, 549-552; love of the 
sea. 552; leaves from Ruskin's accounts, 553-561; Brantwood 
bought, 556; his collection of minerals, 556; wishes to die 



poor. 



558 



Saintship 3"*^ 

lalvltor ....75.110,111,128 

Sap '*^^ 

Savoyard cottage 216 

Savoyaid guide *'5 

Sciences, system in teaching, 279, 453-463 (miscellaneous); envy 
in, 454; Ruskin's opinion of, 454; researches of science never 
rewarded, 454; analysts, 456; modern, 457; genesis of song, 

458; sciences of the arts 458 

Scientists, religion of the earlier 362 

Scott. Sir Walter, dislikes dry scientific sch«ol-books, 295 (note); 
his novels, 521-530; at Ashestiel, 522-524; best romances, 524; 

heroes, 524 ; Scotch dialect in novels. 525-530 

Sculpture, stone dolls, 27 ; color in, 164; vital carving, 164, 166, 
167; portrait s., 166; on the choir at Amiens, 167; on Greek 

coins 356, 35r 

Sea, 482-484 (comp. Boats, 568, 569). 

Seaweeds 338 

Seeing things 561 

Sel L-sacriflce 330 

Sensitiveness 345 

Serpents 425-427 

Servant-maid ^68 

Servants 349-352 

Seven Lamps of Architecture, see pp. 163, 164. 

Sev/ing 391 

Shafton, SirPiercie 6* 

Shakespere 510 

Ship, painted 37 

Ships of the line, 569; bow of s 569 

Shoemakers ; 5fi5 

Sisters of Chanty 386, 38i 

Sistine Chapel J3 

Sky,bluefire '^ 

Slavery, American and English 220 

Slugs, of a lettuce 407 

Soldiers, 184, 227, 228, 255; the true, 254; advice to 2.54 

Solomon 562 

Song 562 

Spectrum of blood "ISb 

Spending of wealth 235, 2.38 

Spjder 24.3 

Spin 389 

Spring at Carshalton 541 

Squires. English ^^'^ilS 

Squirrels and boys "g' 

St. Brimo's lilies ' ■ 533 

St. George's Guild, 17, 18; education of boys in, 289; details of, 

314-322; creed 318 

St. George and the dragon 31, 107, 108 

St. Mark's 173-177 

Stamped paper 140 

Stars, of stinking hydrogen •ioo 

Stealing nVo t!i 

Steam machinery 243, 244 

Steam -nightingale ~4J 

Stones of Venice '"'* 



m INDEX. 

PAOS 

Study, of a subject 508 

Supply and Demand 233-225 

Swiss cottages and peasants 346 

Swiss sceneiy .- 499-501 

Swiss States of the Forest 573 

Symbols 34 

Sympathy 345 

System-makers 568 

System in science 279 

Taste, diffusion of — . . 561 

Taxation 210-214; comp. 251 

Tea-shop 541,542 

Telegraph, the 417 

Ten Commandments, the modern 344 

Teniers 74, 106 

Terra-cotta 151, 171 

Theatre 414,565 

Ticino river 226 

Tintoret, 38-40, 52, 56; 101-104 (San Rocco, massacre, Last Judg- 
ment) ; ruined pictures in 1851 187 

Titian 99, 104, 109, 114 

Tobacco 24,353 

Tombstones, new kind, see 358 344 

Tourists, advice to 26 

Tower, needs no help 332 

Trade, 226-238; making and selling of bad goods, 230, 231; middle- 
men, 233; free trade 233,234 

Trees, see 471-475 ; the pine 477^77 

Tribune, the, in Florence 313 

Truth, dislike of 334 

Turner, 63; as finisher, 51; anecdotes and judgments on, 111-123; 
Turner and Lawrence in the Exhibition, 115; Emerson and 
Turner. 116; kindness of, 116; the Splugen drawing, 117-120; 
will, 120; slave-ship, 120-122; as a colorist, 126, 127; Loire, 

drawing of, 498; drawing of Terni 566 (n.) 

Tympanum 455 

Ugliness, cult of 456 

Ulverstone 241 

Umfraville Hotel 416 

Undones, not the Dones 335 

Unprodigal Son 361 

" Upper Classes " 194-205 

Valley, Arcadian 490 

Vase 518 

Venetian character, 97, 98; painting, 99-105; glass 59 

Venice, 90-97; religion of, 98 (and note) and 99; source of the 
Renaissance style, 161; tombs of the doges, 171-173; first re- 
corded words of 359 

Verona 24 

Veronese, 54, 104, 109; as finisher 52 

Vicarious salvation 359 

Virgil 507 

Virtue 329 

Vulgar, the 137 

Vulgarity 854-857 

Wages, not determined by competition 

Walls, garden • ■„■ ^^ 

War, 244-258: as a game, 245; w. the foundation of the arts, 846; 
w an evil, 247-48; modern war, 248-356; American w., 349; 
steel traps, 250; England and Poland in '59, 252; girl mur- 
dered, 252; dream-parable of . 256-258 

War and t ixation 211-214; comp. 251 

Warwick Oastle, rebuilding 564 

Waves 483-484 



INDEX. 593 

PAGE 

Wealth, 189-191 ; 196-205; no w. but life; eidolon of, 200; spending 

of 235-238 

Words, 279; derivation of 509 

\Vords\vorth 507 

Wordsworth school-house 291 

Work, (see Labor;) good w. ill paid, 192; people ashanied of.. 333, 334 

AVorkingmen 221-225 

Women, 380-403; women and religion, 386; see 329; as artists, 
380; women's work, 381-383; public duties, 382; power of, 383; 
w. and their lovers, 383 ; dress, 384-386; w. and religion, 380- 

389; girls 389-103 

Woodcuts 136-138 

Woolwich Infant 407 

Writing (authorship), 502 ; good English 507 

Yorkshire 243 

Young men in politics 260 



MAY 16 1900 



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